7.7.1 Planning an evaluation

An evaluation requires resources!

The precise resources needed for the evaluation will be organisation-specific but the key resource is likely to be time, and time usually means cost, which may be higher if any parts of the evaluation are undertaken externally.

Likely cost should be estimated at the outset, and while any initial estimate is unlikely to be an exact figure, it ought to be possible to identify a reasonable range.

The cost of evaluation should be appropriate to the size of the project being evaluated

However, a law of diminishing returns applies; there is likely to be a balance where the amount of information gathered gives a reasonable assessment of a project without the benefit to cost ratio falling too low: the challenge is to assess in advance where the balance point might be.