Finally, it’s time to bring all the planning and preparation to life and launch an initial implementation of the planned intervention. This is the stage for checks and revisions, where you implement a prototype or initial site intervention to discover where modifications need to happen before scaling to full implementation. Embedded evaluative and continuous improvement approaches will help to inform this process as well. Despite all the preparation and capacity building work already accomplished, change is difficult and may be met with anxiety, resistance, and sometimes wise caution, so surprises are inevitable and missteps will occur. What these will be and learning how to address them in a prototype helps set the stage for a more successful roll-out to full implementation. This stage is where the intervention site (destination), with support from the local partnership, performs their first performance improvement cycle (see Appendix E). Activities related to monitoring and evaluation are discussed in Appendix F and IMPACT’s Developmental Evaluation Guide.
Key activities during initial implementation include:
- Documenting what you are doing
- Collaboratively reviewing what you have done
- Learning new ways of working
- Learning from mistakes
- Continuous efforts to achieve buy-in
- Frequent problem-solving at practice and program (destination) and local partnership (source) levels
