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Credits

This specification stands on a long body of work on Theory of Change and on evaluation. Where it takes an idea, a term, or a structure from that work, the source is named here. The research brief is the full record: it summarizes each source and gives the citations.

Methods and where they appear

Source What the spec takes from it Where it appears
ActKnowledge and the Center for Theory of Change (Taplin and Clark) Backwards mapping, preconditions, rationales for each link, the accountability ceiling, and the components of an indicator Precondition groups, link rationale, ceilingOfAccountability, indicators
UNDG, UNDAF Companion Guidance: Theory of Change (2017) The assumption types causality, implementation, external factors, and partnerships, the idea that each assumption is judged for plausibility and for whether it needs testing, and the problem tree of immediate, underlying, and structural causes Assumption.type, needsTesting, Cause.level, the assumption lint rules
Organizational Research Services for the Annie E. Casey Foundation (Reisman and Gienapp, 2004) Outcomes arranged along time horizons Outcome levels and lag
Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change (Weiss, 1995; Anderson, 2005) Theory-driven evaluation, and the three quality criteria of plausible, feasible, and testable qualityReview on revisions and the review rubric
Outcome Mapping (Earl, Carden, and Smutylo, IDRC, 2001) Spheres of control, influence, and interest, and boundary partners Outcome.sphere, the boundary_partner actor role
Contribution analysis (Mayne) Separating a claim of attribution from a claim of contribution Indicator.claim, and the lint rule that indicators above the ceiling claim contribution
Process tracing (Van Evera, 1997; combined with contribution analysis by Befani and Mayne, 2014) Grading evidence for a causal link with the straw-in-the-wind, hoop, smoking-gun, and doubly decisive tests Evidence.processTracingTest
Most Significant Change (Davies and Dart, 2005) Stories of change coded into themes so they can be counted Stories, themes, and the story codebook
Outcome Harvesting (Wilson-Grau and Britt, 2012) Outcomes found after the fact, as a kind of evidence The outcome_harvest evidence type
The logic model and logical framework traditions (W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2004; USAID; UNDG, Results-Based Management Handbook, 2011) The linear views of a theory The logic-model and logframe reports
Problem-tree analysis in the logical framework approach (GTZ, ZOPP, 1997; European Commission, Project Cycle Management Guidelines, 2004) The core problem in the middle, its causes below as roots, and its effects above as branches effects, Cause.parents, Effect.parents, addressesEffects, the problem-tree report
V2MOM (Marc Benioff, Salesforce; Benioff and Adler, 2009) Vision, values, methods, obstacles, and measures, in that order, as one alignment document context.values and the V2MOM export
Six Sigma's DMAIC cycle (Motorola; General Electric) Improvement efforts that define, measure, analyze, improve, and control a metric from a baseline toward a target pathway.projections with dmaic, the DMAIC export, and the IMP-DMA lint rules
Statistical process control (Shewhart, 1931) Control limits from an individuals and moving-range chart, three sigma either side of the center line Control limits in the DMAIC export

Isabel Vogel's review of how Theory of Change is used in international development (DFID, 2012) makes the point, quoted in the research brief, that a logic model without reference to its context is closer to a logframe than to a theory of change. In that spirit this spec keeps assumptions, risks, and context in the same document as the pathways.

Projects and software

This project is part of the PRISM family of projects by the same author. It uses prism-core for shared types, the goals packages of prism-roadmap for the OKR, outcome-journey, V2MOM, and DMAIC exports, d2vision for the layered logic-model and problem-tree diagrams, and structured-evaluation for rubrics and GO and NO-GO reports. Operating-system differences are handled by oscompat.

The command line is built on Cobra and pflag, YAML is read and written with yaml.v3, documents are checked with santhosh-tekuri/jsonschema, the schemas are generated from the Go types with invopop/jsonschema, and the MCP server uses the official Go SDK. The list of every module compiled into the binary, with its license and copyright notice, is in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Some commands call Marp, the Mermaid CLI, and Pandoc when they are installed. They are not included. This site is built with MkDocs and the Material theme, and its page template comes from visionspec.

How the sources are used

  • The definitions, guidance, and examples in this documentation are written in our own words. The research brief quotes sources in short passages, each attributed to its author.
  • All examples are fictional: the organizations, people, numbers, and URLs are invented. No example describes a real organization.
  • The names of organizations and publications are used to credit their work. Naming a source does not mean that its authors or publishers have reviewed or endorse this project.
  • This project is licensed under the MIT License. The software it depends on keeps its own licenses, which are all permissive.

If a credit is missing or wrong, please open an issue.

Works cited above