The Strategy Testing Workbook: Politically-Smart Adaptive Programming in Complex Environments

Strategy testing, a technique that The Asia Foundation employs for the adaptive management of international development programs—enhances both the effectiveness of programming approaches and achieves stronger, more enduring results. The Asia Foundation’s new Strategy Testing Workbook, building on its previous publication from 2015, offers a practical guide to mastering this crucial approach.

This comprehensive workbook illuminates key insights and tools, including political economy analysis, theories of change, and robust monitoring, evaluation, and learning systems. It proposes techniques and practices that development practitioners can use to adjust strategies in response to evolving conditions, ensuring greater impact and sustainability. The guide has three sections: Build the Scaffolding, Set Up the System, and Document, Learn, Adapt. Together, these sections guide practitioners through designing and implementing adaptive strategies, emphasizing the importance of documenting observations, reflecting on real-time data, and making strategic adjustments with input from critical friends.

Designed for our program teams and partners, we hope this workbook will inspire innovations in contemporary development theory and practice, helping practitioners move beyond formulaic approaches and embrace adaptive, context-sensitive strategies that are responsive to the complexities of real-world environments.