CHSCM 3.0 - Unit 1 - SCM in the Humanitarian World

In carrying out a situation assessment, planners have a range of techniques from which to draw,
ranging from the techniques of needs and resource assessments undertaken at the site, to detailed
surveys by specialists. For any assessment process to be effective, a people-oriented approach is
required which ensures that planners have a clear picture of the potential beneficiary population
and their communities, their activities, and their resources. The list that follows includes many of the
techniques that planners use at different stages in the assessment process:
• Mission statement development/review
• Policy gap analysis
• Challenges inventory
• Core problem analysis
• Stakeholder mapping & interest inventory
• SWOT (strength, weaknesses,
opportunities, threats) analysis
• Progress review
• Research/studies/surveys
• Expert opinion
• People-oriented planning
• Core problem identification & analysis
Vision is our image of how things should be, i.e. the desired situation in terms of how an
organization wants the situation to be transformed as a result of the impact of their and their
partners' efforts. Vision is described in terms of goals, objectives, and scenarios.
Key questions that should be answered in during vision development include:
• What is the desired situation we want, and within what time frame?
• What overall impact do we want our efforts to have?
• What is the chain of results necessary to achieve the overall impact we want?
• If we make maximum use of all available resources in the most efficient way possible, what
will be the result?
• How will we measure our impact?
Planners typically approach the development of vision, i.e. the setting of objectives, in three ways,
and often in combination. These are:
• Mission and objectives definition
• Scenario(s) development
• Core problem translation into a hierarchy of objectives/chain of results
The first approach, mission and objectives definition, involves working from the mission of an
organization to the setting of objectives. This means interpreting organization strategy in a given
situation, analyzing the situation, and then setting a hierarchy of objectives which are consistent with
the mission and situation assessment.
The second approach, scenario(s) development, involves developing scenarios which provide a best
guess about what is likely to happen in a given situation. These scenarios are then assessed in
terms of their likelihood, and a choice is made in terms of which scenario or scenarios are likely to
be most accurate, with objective setting going forward on that basis. This approach is often used in
situations in which contingency planning is needed.