CILIPS > Information Literacy: Securing Change > Toolkit > Assessing the Impact of change

Identifying criteria for success

You need to be clear how you will recognise or measure successful outcomes so that you learn from your experiences and are able to demonstrate that you have achieved the outcomes anticipated in your business case. Your personal and professional credibility may rest on how well you can do this.

You will need baseline information to measure progress and to be able to demonstrate significant benefits to the organisation in terms of

• performance
• attainment
• increased skills
• increased satisfaction
• financial savings
• longer term impacts
• better skills transferability

Measuring progress

In order to assess progress, feedback will have to collected and analysed. There are many different ways to achieve this and it is important to consider this at an early stage so that the necessary steps can be taken. Throughout much of the process you will be identifying your own performance indicators and using self evaluation to analyse your results. Consider the following approaches:

• collect baseline data and then gather additional data as the project develops or wait until the end of the project
• establish control groups or collections for comparative purposes
• collect quantitative evidence (hard, measurables like numbers) or qualitative evidence (soft indicators which seek to find out more about the impact of the project). For example, you could measure the number of results from a prescribed internet search or you could ask how useful the results were to finding the information required.
• use formal results, such as pass rates in tests, customer feedback through surveys or anecdotal evidence
• set up control groups, ask customers, use email, request written responses and so on.
• feedback might be sought on occasion, throughout the project or at the end.
• remember, if something is clearly in need of adjustment, you must be prepared to act on the feedback right away.

Since analysis is time consuming and painstaking, free web tools like surveymonkey are useful. The surveys can be directly completed online by the customer or paper versions can be circulated, with the responses being manually entered online when they have been returned by participants. Results are then generated automatically.

Celebrating success

Finally, it is important that you recognise and celebrate success at the end of your venture. There are many ways in which you could do this, including sharing constructive feedback, creating publications, developing awards and special events. This is good for raising morale and may even lead to support for future ventures.

Get your success to speak for you and encourage students to act as your advocates through their achievements.