Building outcomes models

This sections sets out information about building outcomes models. It goes beyond the rest of the information in this Help Documentation which is about the technical aspects of using DoView as a piece of software. The suggestions in this section apply to any outcomes models you build regardless of whether or not you use DoView to build them.

Different people have different approaches to building outcomes models. Some have rules about what you can and can not put into outcomes models. DoView is flexible enough to be able to accommodate any approach you may wish to use, or which you may be required by others to use.

However, having built many outcomes models in many different areas, at DoView we have a number of suggestions abut how to make your models better and these are set out in this section.

•	Building good outcomes models - a set of guidelines for creating well constructed outcomes models which can be used for many purposes (strategic planning, priority setting, monitoring, evaluation, research and development planning, contracting and other aspects of organizational life).

•	DoView model conventions - some suggestions for conventions to use when building DoView models.

•	Why you should use compact pages - the advantages of building your models in compact pages even if you also clone them to one or more large pages for printing to ledger/A3.

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What is an outcomes model? - why DoView keeps things simple by referring to all elements in an outcomes model simply as outcomes at various levels rather than requiring you to have work out exactly what type of element you are dealing with (e.g. goals, missions, intermediate outcomes, outputs, activities etc.)

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Non-siloed outcomes models - explaining why it is an important feature of DoView that it lets you link any outcome to any other outcome and it lets you clone outcomes, which avoids you being forced to just drill down in single 'silos' under individual high level outcomes as happens with some other software and database approaches.

•	Typical DoView process - summary of the process of meetings etc typically used when building a DoView outcomes model.

•	Using DoView in meetings - how to optimize using DoView in meetings.

•	Workflow - Many projects within an organization - discussed how to work in a situation where you are dealing with multiple projects which are all contributing to one set of high-level outcomes.

•	Workflow - OutcomesModels.org - models you can use - a set of outcomes models you can use is available at www.outcomesmodels.org