written by Matt Andrews
It is nearly two years since we at the Building State Capability (BSC) program combined with various other groups across the developing world to create an umbrella movement called Doing Development Differently (DDD). The new acronym was meant to provide a convening body for all those entities and people trying to use new methods to achieve development’s goals. We were part of this group with our own approach, which many know as Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA).
Interestingly, a few of the DDD folks thought we should change this acronym and call PDIA something fresher, cooler, and more interesting; it was too clunky, they said, to ever really catch on, and needed to be called something like ‘agile’ or ‘lean’ (to borrow from approaches we see as influential cousins in the private domain).
The DDD movement has grown quite a bit in the last few years, with many donor organizations embracing the acronym in its work, and some even advocating for doing PDIA in their projects and interventions. A number of aid organizations and development consultancies have developed other, fresher terms to represent their approaches to DDD as well; the most common word we see now is ‘adaptive’, with various organizations creating ‘adaptive’ units or drawing up processes for doing ‘adaptive’ work.
‘Adaptive programming’ certainly rolls off the tongue easier than ‘Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation’!
Some have asked me why we don’t change our approach to call it Adaptive as well, others have asked where we have been while all the discussions about names and titles and acronyms have been going on, and while organizations in the aid world have been developing proposals for adaptive projects and the like (some of which are now turned into large tenders for consulting opportunities). My answer is simple: I’ve made peace with the fact that we are much more interested in trying to work out how to do this work in the places it is needed the most (in implementing entities within governments that struggle to get stuff done).
So, we have been working out how to do our PDIA work (where the acronym really reflects what we believe—that complex issues in development can only be addressed through problem driven, iterative, and adaptive processes). Our observation, from taking an action research approach to over twenty policy and reform engagements, a light-touch teaching intervention with over 40 government officials, an online teaching program, and more, is clear: the people we work with (and who actually do the work) in governments don’t really care for the catchy name or acronym, or if PDIA is clunky or novel or old and mainstream. The people we are working with are simply interested in finding help: to empower their organizations by building real capability through the successful achievement of results.
We thus seldom even talk about PDIA, or adaptive programming, or DDD, or agile or lean, or whatever else we talk about in our classrooms and seminar venues back at Harvard (and in many of our blog posts and tweets). Indeed, we find that a key dimension of this work—that makes it work—is not being flashy and cool and cutting edge. It’s about being real and applied, and organic, and relational. And actually quite nodescript and mundane; even boringly focused on helping people do the everyday things that have eluded them.
So, PDIA’s lack of ‘flash’ and ‘coolness’ may be its greatest asset (and one we never knew about), because it does not matter what PDIA is called…what matters is whether it is being done.