AYA is an application for an organizational results framework, a systematic approach used for strategic planning and program evaluation.
It provides a structured and systematic way to define, track, and measure progress and outcomes, facilitating effective decision-making and resource allocation.
Background
eHealth Africa, a Nigerian NGO, has the mission to build stronger health systems through the design and implementation of data-driven solutions that respond to local needs and provide underserved communities with tools to lead healthier lives.
In order to enhance transparency, accountability, and the ability to demonstrate the positive impact of its work in the healthcare and health technology sectors, the organisation implemented a results framework.
A results framework helps eHealth Africa clearly define its goals and objectives. It helps to establish measurable outcomes that indicate the impact of its programs and initiatives. Furthermore, it can be used to monitor the performance of its projects in real-time, therefore allowing early identification of issues and the ability to make adjustments as needed.
As a result, the organization can plan better, and adapt its strategies and approaches to improve results over time.
The Challenge
To support eHealth Africa with the implementation of its results framework the informatics team conceptualized a digital tool, which made the process of defining the result matrix for eHealth Africas projects across departments easier, unified and accessible to everyone.
Historically every project team had its own way to plan and evaluate, making it difficult for management to strategically plan and monitor across departments. There was also a lack of transparency and insights for individual employees, as the organization and the number of individual initiatives grew.
The challenge facing all teams was to collectively define and assess the requisite criteria and specifications for an organizational digital results framework, as there were no existing digital tools available in the market that could be readily adopted or serve as learning references.
Collaboratively and incrementally we shaped the tools for setting up a results framework that would fit to our organization's needs.
AYA was born.
A results framework typically consists of several key components:
Goals and Objectives:
These are the overarching aims and specific, measurable objectives that an organization or project aims to achieve.
Outputs:
These are the tangible, quantifiable products, services, or deliverables that result from the activities undertaken to achieve the objectives.
Outcomes:
Outcomes are the broader changes or effects that occur as a result of the outputs. They are showing a progression of changes over time.
Indicators:
Indicators are specific, measurable, and observable variables or metrics used to assess progress toward achieving objectives and outcomes.
Results Matrix
The core component of AYA is the Results Matrix, utilised to structure every project. Its intuitive drag-and-drop editing capability makes it very flexible during the process of constructing the desired framework by the user.
Individual items such as Outcomes, Outputs, Activities and Inputs can be linked, facilitating the highlighting of items that influence one another. An Activity can serve multiple Outputs, or multiple Outputs can contribute to the same Outcome.
These relationships don't adhere to a simple tree structure; instead, they possess a many-to-many relationship, which posed an ongoing challenge during the design of the User Interface.
Indicators
To comprehensively evaluate a project's health, each outcome and output can be linked to one or multiple indicators, enabling the collection of data throughout the project's lifecycle.
Visual cues in the form of traffic lights (red, yellow, and green) are employed at the Outcome, Output, and Project levels to signify the overall health status of the project. These indicators effectively pinpoint areas requiring immediate attention, streamlining project management and decision-making.
Emphasizing on the visualization of indicator trends soon became a focal point as the successful implementation of numerous results frameworks underscored the imperative for robust reporting mechanisms.
Our team recognized that indicators necessitate unique calculations and representations, based on factors like baselines, targets, measure types, and data collection methods. We identified four fundamental types that can be configured to accommodate the specific requirements of each indicator.
Utilizing the D3 library, I meticulously crafted visualizations for diverse trend types. An intriguing challenge was to maintain a minimalist design approach, prioritizing the essential message: the current status in comparison to the desired status.
Reports
AYA
Projects in AYA
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