The design was fine. The delivery is where it broke.
A process evaluation maps how work actually happens rather than how the manual says it should, then locates the bottlenecks costing you time, money and quality.
Good designs fail in the gap between plan and practice
Beneficiaries wait eleven weeks for a decision the process says takes three. Nobody is lazy and nothing is broken on paper — the delay lives in handoffs nobody owns.
We follow the work through the organisation, timing each step and interviewing the people doing it. The output is a map of what really happens, where the time actually goes, and a ranked list of fixes with the effort each one requires.
How we run it
Map the intended process
Document what the design, manual and workplan say should happen, step by step.
Trace the real one
Shadow the work, time each stage, interview staff and follow individual cases end to end.
Quantify the gap
Where delays accumulate, where quality drops, where fidelity to the design breaks down.
Rank the fixes
Recommendations ordered by impact against implementation effort, with owners proposed.
What you receive
Actual process map
A visual map of real delivery including the informal workarounds staff invented.
Bottleneck analysis
Time spent at each stage, with the specific steps consuming the most and adding the least.
Fidelity assessment
How closely delivery matches the design, and whether each deviation helps or hurts.
Frontline perspective
What delivery staff say blocks them — usually the most actionable material in the report.
Ranked fix list
Five or so changes sorted by impact versus effort, so you can start on Monday.
Efficiency baseline
Current cycle times recorded so improvement can be measured after the fixes land.
Delay hides in predictable places
Handoffs between teams
Work waiting in someone's inbox is the single most common cause of delay.
Approval chains
Sign-offs added for control that no longer catch anything.
Duplicate data entry
The same information typed into three systems by three people.
Single points of dependency
One person whose absence stops everything for a week.
Often commissioned alongside this
Baseline Evaluations
Establish a defensible benchmark before implementation
OpenMidline Evaluations
Course-correct while there is still time to act
OpenEndline Evaluations
Prove outcomes, effectiveness and value for money
OpenNeeds Assessments
Locate the real gaps before you commit resources
OpenImpact Assessments
Measure long-term social and economic change
OpenQuestions we get asked
Send us the terms of reference.
You will get a method, a named team, a timeline and a fixed price — and an honest opinion on whether this is the right evaluation for your question.
No obligation · Response within one business day · NDA on request