Design

What the activity covers

Design decides what is measured and how. It sets the scope in entities and principles, the period, the objectives, the evidence required, the raters and the way results will be aggregated and used.

What a working design step looks like

Design is where the group decides the unit of analysis. One design may rate the group as a whole, each entity separately, or both; the model allows any of these, but the choice must be written down before fieldwork. The design should also say how a contested rating will be resolved, because in a group the controller and an entity board will sometimes read the same practice differently.

The artefact this activity leaves

• The evaluation design document, naming scope, period, dimensions, aspects, instrument and evidence level.
• The raters and their independence from the areas they rate.
• The stakeholder involvement plan.
• The aggregation method fixed in advance.

What goes wrong

A design written after the ratings were collected is a rationalisation, not a design.

Who owns it in a group

The controller's governing body owns the programme, but the activity has to reach every entity in the boundary. For design, record which board or committee took the decision, which entities were included, and where an entity's own view differed. A programme that runs only at group level produces a group result that the entity boards do not recognise. Where an entity is excluded, record why: a recent acquisition, a joint venture with reserved matters or a board that has asked to be treated separately. An exclusion that is written down is a scope decision; an exclusion that is silent is a defect in the evaluation.

Where it sits

• All five activities
• The three aspects
• The six-point scale
• All 35 requirements