Assignment One Discussion Page
Online Learning
OL 102 Project Architecture: Managing for Impact.

Center for Sustainable Impact: https://csd-i.org/project-architecture-ol-102/.

This week’s resources:
Class Home Page

Assignment One Homework
Magee Project Example Assignment One
OL 102 Assignment One Student Logframe Template to Fill In

Assignment One: Beginning Logframes
Welcome Back
Welcome back to Online Learning at the Center and the second course in this series, OL 102 Project Architecture: Managing for Impact.

Getting Started: Beginning Logframes
In the last course, From the Ground Up, we worked with community need to develop a project and the last step was to place our goals, sub goals and outputs into a planning matrix. In this course we’re going to begin the process of turning that matrix into a full-fledged logical framework — or logframe.

Logframes
A logframe is a planning tool that helps us to organize our project so that we can achieve our project goals. It is also a management tool that helps us to manage the project so that it will run efficiently and achieve the impact that we planned.

In working with donors and stakeholders, your logframe will allow you to communicate to others exactly what you are trying to accomplish, and convey to them if you are making progress toward your goals during the course of your project.

We will also learn over the next few weeks that a logframe lets us look at a project from the perspectives of the different people involved in the project, and from the perspective of different timeframes within the life of a project.

Goals, Outputs and Activities
This week we will begin expanding our logframe in a process of “reverse engineering”. Goals are made of sub goals, sub-goals are made up of outputs, outputs are made up of activities; it’s a bit of a pyramid with activities at the bottom. The cool thing about a logframe is that you can plan from the goal down to the activities, or from the activities up to the goal. This allows you to test your theory of change from both directions.

We understand how complex and confusing this can be – so we are going to take it slowly so that you can really absorb the process.

All of the information that you need for this week you have already collected in the previous class; you don’t need to do any extra field work this week. You simply need to organize your thoughts. Probably the most successful assignment from the last class was the Lesson Plan from Assignment 5 – you did a wonderful job! The activities in the lesson plan represent some of the activities that you will incorporate into this assignment.

Getting started
The Assignment One Homework will guide you the process.