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Business Plan Evaluation

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What is Business Plan Evaluation?

A business plan evaluation is a critical process that involves the assessment of a business plan to determine its feasibility, viability, and potential for success. This process is crucial for entrepreneurs, investors, and other stakeholders as it helps them make informed decisions about the business. The evaluation process involves analyzing various aspects of the business plan, including the business model, market analysis, financial projections, and management team.

The purpose of a business plan evaluation is to identify strengths and weaknesses in the plan, assess the feasibility of the business idea, evaluate the potential for profitability, and determine the likelihood of achieving the business objectives. The evaluation process also helps identify areas where improvements can be made to enhance the chances of success. This process is particularly important for solopreneurs who are solely responsible for the success or failure of their business.

Importance of Business Plan Evaluation

The evaluation of a business plan is an essential step in the business planning process. It provides an opportunity for the entrepreneur to critically examine their business idea and identify potential challenges and opportunities . The evaluation process also provides valuable insights that can help improve the business plan and increase the chances of success.

For investors, a business plan evaluation is a crucial tool for risk assessment. It allows them to assess the viability of the business idea, the competence of the management team, and the potential for return on investment. This information is vital in making investment decisions.

For Solopreneurs

For solopreneurs, the evaluation of a business plan is particularly important. As they are solely responsible for the success or failure of their business, it is crucial that they thoroughly evaluate their business plan to ensure that it is feasible, viable, and has the potential to be profitable.

The evaluation process can help solopreneurs identify potential challenges and opportunities, assess the feasibility of their business idea, and determine the likelihood of achieving their business objectives. This information can be invaluable in helping them make informed decisions about their business.

For Investors

Investors use the evaluation process to determine whether or not to invest in a business. They look at various aspects of the business plan, including the business model, market analysis, financial projections, and management team, to assess the potential for success. If the evaluation reveals that the business plan is solid and has a high potential for success, the investor may decide to invest in the business.

Components of a Business Plan Evaluation

A business plan evaluation involves the analysis of various components of the business plan. These components include the executive summary, business description, market analysis, organization and management, product line or service, marketing and sales, and financial projections.

Each of these components plays a crucial role in the overall success of the business, and therefore, they must be thoroughly evaluated to ensure that they are realistic, achievable, and aligned with the business objectives.

Executive Summary

The executive summary is the first section of a business plan and provides a brief overview of the business. It includes information about the business concept, the business model, the target market, the competitive advantage, and the financial projections. The executive summary is often the first thing that investors read, and therefore, it must be compelling and persuasive.

In the evaluation process, the executive summary is assessed to determine whether it clearly and concisely presents the business idea and the plan for achieving the business objectives. The evaluator also assesses whether the executive summary is compelling and persuasive enough to attract the attention of investors.

Business Description

The business description provides detailed information about the business. It includes information about the nature of the business, the industry, the business model, the products or services, and the target market. The business description also provides information about the business's competitive advantage and how it plans to achieve its objectives.

In the evaluation process, the business description is assessed to determine whether it provides a clear and comprehensive description of the business. The evaluator also assesses whether the business description clearly outlines the business's competitive advantage and how it plans to achieve its objectives.

Methods of Business Plan Evaluation

There are several methods that can be used to evaluate a business plan. These methods include the SWOT analysis, the feasibility analysis, the competitive analysis, and the financial analysis. Each of these methods provides a different perspective on the business plan and can provide valuable insights into the potential for success.

It's important to note that no single method can provide a complete evaluation of a business plan. Therefore, it's recommended to use a combination of these methods to get a comprehensive understanding of the business plan.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that is used to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to a business. This method involves examining the internal and external factors that can affect the success of the business.

In the evaluation process, a SWOT analysis can provide valuable insights into the potential for success of the business. It can help identify the strengths and weaknesses of the business plan, as well as the opportunities and threats in the market.

Feasibility Analysis

A feasibility analysis is a process that is used to determine whether a business idea is viable. This method involves assessing the practicality of the business idea and whether it can be successfully implemented.

In the evaluation process, a feasibility analysis can provide valuable insights into the feasibility of the business plan. It can help determine whether the business idea is practical and whether it can be successfully implemented.

In conclusion, a business plan evaluation is a critical process that involves the assessment of a business plan to determine its feasibility, viability, and potential for success. This process is crucial for entrepreneurs, investors, and other stakeholders as it helps them make informed decisions about the business.

The evaluation process involves analyzing various aspects of the business plan, including the business model, market analysis, financial projections, and management team. The purpose of a business plan evaluation is to identify strengths and weaknesses in the plan, assess the feasibility of the business idea, evaluate the potential for profitability, and determine the likelihood of achieving the business objectives.

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How to Measure Your Business Strategy's Success

• 04 Jan 2024

Measuring your business strategy’s success is vital to strategy execution .

Despite its importance, research by SurveyMonkey shows that only 35 percent of business owners set benchmarks or goals. Among those who set them, 90 percent consider themselves successful. Of those who don't, only 71 percent report the same.

If you want to achieve organizational objectives and avoid common strategic planning pitfalls , here’s why it’s important to evaluate your strategy.

Access your free e-book today.

Why Is It Important to Evaluate Your Strategy?

Evaluating your strategy can help your organization achieve its goals and objectives while highlighting necessary adjustments for long-term success.

Its benefits include:

• Ensuring organizational alignment
• Establishing accountability
• Optimizing operations

Assessing your business strategy is an ongoing process. To ensure it’s set up to succeed, you must evaluate it pre-, during, and post-implementation. Here’s how to do so.

How to Measure Your Strategy’s Success

1. revisit goals and objectives.

Every business strategy needs clearly defined performance goals. Without them, it can be difficult to identify harmful deviations, streamline the execution process, and recognize achievements.

After establishing goals and objectives, plan to revisit them during and after implementing your strategy. According to Harvard Business School Professor Robert Simons in the online course Strategy Execution , the best way to do so is by comparing them to critical performance variables —the factors you must achieve or implement to make your strategy succeed.

For example, if your company’s value comes from customer loyalty, one of your critical performance variables could be customer satisfaction. When customers no longer receive value from your products or services, that could impact your company’s bottom line.

The best way to verify critical performance variables is by analyzing them against your strategy map —a visual tool outlining the cause-and-effect relationships underpinning your strategy. Those variables should also receive high importance on your balanced scorecard , which translates your strategy into goals and objectives.

By taking these steps, you can identify performance measures worth reviewing.

2. Review Measures

Evaluating business performance requires measures —quantitative values you can scale and use for comparison—and they must tell the right story.

According to Strategy Execution , you should ask three questions when reviewing measures:

• Do they align with my strategy?
• Are they objective, complete, and responsive?
• Do they link to economic value?

For example, if you want to improve your company’s brand loyalty, metrics worth monitoring include the number of new customers, average purchases per customer, and the number of social media followers.

A balanced scorecard can provide a holistic view of your business performance measures—ensuring all your employees are on the same page.

“You can have the best strategy in the world,” Simons says in Strategy Execution . “But at the end of the day, what everyone pays attention to is what they're measured on. So, you need to be sure that measures throughout the business reflect your strategy, so that every employee will devote their efforts to implementing that strategy.”

3. Supervise Monitoring Systems

While balanced scorecards are powerful diagnostic control systems —formal information systems used to monitor organizational outcomes—they don’t provide visibility into all measures of success. That’s why you need additional systems to streamline strategic plans’ evaluation.

For example, you can use customer relationship management systems’ analytics tools to generate reports that align with business goals and objectives. To boost customer loyalty, you can automate reports on:

• Purchasing patterns
• Purchase frequency
• Customer survey scores

“But to ensure that these systems are effective, you need to invest considerable time and attention in their design,” Simons says in Strategy Execution . “You must not only spend time negotiating and setting goals—as we've discussed—you must also design measures for these goals and then align performance incentives.”

4. Talk to Employees

Employee feedback and buy-in are other useful tools for measuring success.

For example, creative software company Adobe is known for its loyal employee base. That was put to the test when the company shifted to a subscription-based model, launching Adobe Creative Cloud .

Company leaders briefed employees on strategic changes and how they provided value to customers. They also encouraged employees to contribute ideas and feedback throughout the transition. With minimal internal pushback and a boost in collaboration, Adobe knew its strategy would succeed and ensure relevance in a constantly evolving market.

“The best businesses motivate their employees to be creative, entrepreneurial, and willing to work with others to find customer solutions,” Simons says in Strategy Execution .

Related: How to Create a Culture of Strategy Execution

5. Reach Out to Customers

Customer feedback is a key measure of your strategy’s success. According to a recent report by Zendesk , 73 percent of business leaders believe customer service directly links with business performance—with 64 percent attributing customer service to positive business growth.

Feedback can also reflect how well initiatives align with customer needs and expectations when it comes to value creation , making it important to consistently seek out ways to monitor attitudes toward your company and its strategy.

In Strategy Execution , Tom Siebel, CEO of C3 AI, shares his thoughts on customer satisfaction when measuring success.

“Everything that's important to the business, we have a KPI and we measure it,” Siebel says. “And what could be more important than customer satisfaction?”

Unlike your company’s reputation, measuring customer satisfaction has a more personal touch in identifying what they love and how to capitalize on it.

“We do anonymous customer satisfaction surveys every quarter to see how we're measuring up to our customer expectations,” Siebel says in the course.

Your customer satisfaction measures should reflect your desired market position and focus on creating additional value. When customers are happy, profit margins tend to rise, highlighting why this should be the final step in measuring your strategy’s success.

Success Is within Reach

Measuring your strategy’s success is a continuous process that requires understanding your company’s goals and objectives.

By taking an online strategy course , you can develop strategy execution skills to measure performance effectively. Strategy Execution provides an interactive learning experience featuring organizational leaders who share their successes and failures to help you apply course concepts and excel in your career.

Want to learn how to measure your strategy’s success? Explore Strategy Execution —one of our online strategy courses —and download our free strategy e-book to begin your journey toward implementing strategy successfully.

About the Author

Strategy Evaluation Process: Comprehensive Guide + Examples

The process of strategy evaluation is often overlooked in the overall strategic management process . After the flurry of activity in the initial planning stages, followed by the reality check of executing your strategy alongside business-as-usual, strategy evaluation is often neglected.

When this happens, strategies quickly become outdated and out-of-sync with the changing face of the organization.

On the contrary, when an efficient strategy evaluation process is set in place, businesses can benefit from insights and learnings from past performance to inform more efficient decision-making .

What Is Strategy Evaluation?

Strategy evaluation is the process of analyzing a strategy to assess how well it's been implemented and executed. It’s an internal analysis tool and should be used as part of a broader strategic analysis for the organization when making strategic decisions.  

Typically, the strategy evaluation process involves answering questions such as:

• Are we moving forward towards achieving our core business metrics ?
• How much progress have we made towards our Vision ?
• Are our Strategic Focus Areas still relevant?
• Which of our Objectives have we completed?
• Do we have sufficient Projects to deliver incomplete Objectives?
• Are our KPIs still effective for measuring progress towards our Objectives?
• Where did we fall short of our targets? Why did this happen?

At the very least, you need to evaluate your strategy twice a year—or better yet, every quarter. Even if you feel as though your existing company strategy is 'too far gone' and needs a fresh start, you'll want to perform a thorough strategy evaluation to understand what went wrong and use this information for your new strategy.

The mistake that people often make when it comes to strategy execution , is thinking of their strategy as a linear set of steps. In reality, the strategic planning process requires constant iteration and evolution, with strategy evaluation serving as a pivotal factor in shaping strategy formulation.

💡 Pro Tip: A good strategy should never really 'end'. Rather, it should morph into something more ambitious and sophisticated as goals are met.

Steps For a Successful Strategy Evaluation Process

There is no one-size-fits-all in terms of strategy evaluation, so we encourage you to think about how your own process would look like. However, after working on countless strategies with our customers, these are the steps we suggest you follow for a successful evaluation process.

Step 1: Evaluation starts at the start

It may sound counter-intuitive, but ideally, you'll be kicking off your strategy evaluation process back in the planning stage . Strategy evaluation is essentially the process of figuring out:

• What did we do well?
• How can we improve upon what we did well?
• What did we learn about ourselves and the external environment along the way?

One of the best ways to answer these questions is by setting effective KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in your planning stage so you’ll be able to clearly measure performance in the following stages.

Let’s look at an example:

Imagine "EcoWise," a company with a vision to lead global sustainable living. One of their core business metrics is market share , and they aim to expand their eco-friendly products into new international markets.

One of their focus areas could be “International Market Expansion” driven by the following objectives:

• Enter and secure a 5% market share in Europe.
• Launch at least five new eco-friendly products annually.

To understand progress towards the objectives, they set the following KPIs:

• Market Share Growth
• Product Adoption Rate
• Sustainability Ratings

By having clear KPIs that set a benchmark and allow to measure actual results, EcoWise will be able to answer fundamental questions during the strategy evaluation process:

• Did we meet our KPI?
• Why did we fall short?
• Was this even the right KPI?

👉🏻 How Cascade can help?

With Cascade’s planner feature, you can ensure you set all the important elements of your strategic plan with structure and ease and assign measurable targets at the initiative and project levels.

Step 2: Implement consistent processes and tools

Not to sound too much like a broken record, but effective strategy evaluation requires planning that goes beyond the setting of good KPIs. You'll also need to plan out your 'strategy rhythm'—things like:

• How often will we measure progress against our goals?
• What standardized set of reports will be used throughout the business?
• What level of detail shall we capture in our written commentary on progress against the plan?

💡 Pro Tip: It’s important to determine these types of things up front and implement a regime of meetings and reports throughout the organization.

We like to call this process your ' strategy rhythm ' as it should form the backbone of your organization's activities, and be maintained regularly and consistently throughout the year.

Here is an example you can use provided by Cascade’s team of experts:

Step 3: Empower teams to evaluate their own strategies

Empowerment plays a critical role in the strategy evaluation process. Rather than have the leadership team alone participate in your strategy evaluation, invite stakeholders from different areas and departments to prepare their own evaluation of how the team performed against the strategy.

Provide them with a simple framework to conduct the analysis and address essential questions like:

• Did we meet our goals?
• What was it that helped us to succeed?
• What challenges made us fall short?
• Were our goals well set, and have they brought us closer to achieving our overall vision?

Ideally, you'll have your teams present using the tools you defined in step 2 . This includes any strategic dashboards or standardized reports that you agreed on previously.

Cascade’s dashboards and reports in real-time give you and your teams an accurate picture of the strategic performance to aid in your strategy evaluation process.

Step 4: Take corrective action

Steps 4 and 5 (below) are somewhat intertwined and should be performed largely in conjunction with each other. If you find that you're not meeting one of your goals, you'll want to do two things:

• Start by figuring out if the goal is still the right one.
• If it is, take corrective action to address any shortcomings.

Assuming you're still convinced the goal you've set is the right one, you need to implement an action plan to get yourself back on track.

There are many reasons why you might be struggling to hit your goals, ranging from relatively simple issues such as:

• Lack of resource allocation (human or financial)
• Conflicting priorities
• Ineffective tracking of targets
• Misalignment or understanding of the goal

Or your challenges may be more complex and relate to:

• Increased competition
• A significant capital shortfall
• Regulatory pressures
• Lack of internal innovation

Whatever the case, the sooner you can identify these issues, the sooner you can start to take corrective action to ensure a more effective strategy implementation that will get you closer to achieving your desired results.

How to identify the issue?

There are tools and frameworks you can use during the strategy evaluation process that can give you more information about internal and/or external factors that may be hindering your progress.

For example, a SWOT analysis can be useful to reveal what you excel at and where you need improvement. Identifying your weaknesses is key to understanding what might be holding your strategy back.

Another best practice is conducting a competitive analysis to gain insights into what your competitors are doing better. By comparing your strengths and weaknesses against theirs, you can understand where you hold the competitive advantage and where you have gaps that need addressing.

Step 5: Iterate your plan

There are two scenarios where you'll want to iterate your plan as part of your strategy evaluation—one being significantly more positive than the other:

Scenario 1: When you achieve your goals

In an ideal world, your plan evolves because you've successfully checked off some or all of your strategic goals. Your plan isn't set in stone; it's flexible and can take unexpected turns.

For instance, you might reach certain goals much earlier than anticipated. When that happens, you shouldn't wait around for the entire plan to play out. Instead:

• If you've met all your goals, it's time to ask if your broader focus area is complete. If not, it's time for new goals within that focus area.
• Or, if you've successfully nailed all your focus areas, it's time to ponder if you're closer to your vision. If not, new focus areas should come into play.

Scenario 2: When you fall short of your goals

Now, let's consider a different scenario, where you didn't quite hit all your goals. But here's the thing: just because you missed a goal doesn't automatically mean you need to take immediate corrective action.

One of the key outcomes of effective strategy evaluations is the recalibration of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Going back to the example in step 1 , let’s say that EcoWise effectively launched 5 new products, but this did not effectively translate into them gaining significant market share (which was the key metric they were aiming for).  

In this case, it suggests the original KPI might not have been quite right. But you wouldn't have known that without either the KPI in the first place or the process of strategic evaluation.

The platform allows for a flexible setup of your strategy to easily make changes to the plan if needed after the insights learned from your strategic evaluation process. By providing full visibility, your teams and other stakeholders will be aware of the changes in real-time!

Step 6: Celebrate successes

We've saved the most fun part of the strategy evaluation process for last—celebrating success.

Given that your strategy will never ‘finish,’ it’s important to celebrate the successes along the way to keep your teams motivated and engaged. The first time you achieve a KPI or even focus areas— enjoy it!

Celebrating the success of a strategic goal is not only great for morale, but it also sends a strong message that the execution of the plan really really matters .

Strategy Evaluation Framework Example

Let's imagine how a supply chain company could tackle the evaluation of its quarterly supply chain plan:

• KPIs analysis : First, they examine their KPIs to decipher which goals they've attained and which ones are still a work in progress.
• Team performance report : The teams get to work on crafting performance reports, offering insights into their achievements and areas requiring additional focus.
• Further analysis : When certain KPIs fall short, they conduct a deeper analysis to uncover the root causes of these performance gaps. In some cases, they even realize that the initial KPIs might not have been the best fit.
• KPI evolution : If they’ve successfully met a KPI, they adapt and introduce a new one to further advance toward key business metrics.
• Evolving the plan : With insights and learnings from their strategy evaluation, they refine their strategic plan, making tweaks and adjustments as needed.

Centralized Observability: The Key To Effective Strategy Evaluation

In the realm of strategic business management, the journey to success is all about adaptability, evolution, and continuous improvement. A pivotal aspect of this journey is the capability to gain a holistic, centralized view of your strategy.

Centralized observability plays a pivotal role in successful strategy evaluation, empowering organizations to:

• Monitor KPIs and goals in real time.
• Understand how teams work together toward achieving the overarching business goals.
• Quickly spot areas that may need adjustments.
• Foster a culture of transparency and accountability, as teams can see how their efforts impact the broader strategy.

This unified perspective simplifies the process of assessing strategy effectiveness and provides invaluable insights for more effective decision-making.

This is where Cascade , the world’s leading Strategy Execution Platform , comes into play as your strategic ally. Cascade enables centralized observability by offering key features for goal management, performance tracking, and strategy alignment. It streamlines the strategy evaluation process, providing real-time data for confident decision-making.

Discover how Cascade can help! Sign up today for free or book a guided 1:1 product tour with one of Cascade’s in-house strategy execution experts.

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How to Evaluate a Business Plan

by Evangeline Marzec

Published on 16 Oct 2019

Whether you're an investor, an entrepreneur or a business skills teacher, you'll be exposed to a wide variety of business plans and should have a solid, somewhat standard approach to conducting a business plan assessment. Analyze each section individually, and then look at the plan as a whole to determine the viability of the business and the likelihood of its success in the manner proposed. Also consider the writing skills and attention to detail that went into formulating the plan.

Read and Understand the Executive Summary

The first step in a business plan assessment is reading the business' executive summary. This should be a concise "elevator pitch", not a summary of the business plan. In one or two pages, it should convey the market opportunity and the uniquely compelling features of the business that will help it meet that opportunity. The executive summary should excite you and make you want to turn to the next page. If it doesn't, the entrepreneur might lack marketing or writing skills, or it may indicate that the idea itself is not going to fly.

Analyze Opportunity in the Market

Evaluate the market opportunity. Ideally, the market should be growing at least 10% per year and have a substantial potential relative to the size of the business and investment. For example, a small company seeking an investment of $50,000 should see a potential market of $5 million.

The larger the potential market and the faster it is growing, the greater the opportunity in the market. Look to the exhibits and appendices to ensure that the business actually has done the necessary market research and can back up any claims.

Evaluate the Company's Business Strategy

Examine the company strategy for capturing its market. The plan must clearly describe the problem the company is solving or need it is meeting for customers, and then propose a solution. This is the crux of a business plan assessment.

Closely examine the alignment between problem and solution. Will the company actually address that need? This evaluation must take into account the product or service being offered, the operational capacity and efficiency with which the business actually can produce its product, and the quality of the proposed marketing efforts.

Examine the Business Environment

The business plan should describe the competitive landscape in which the company operates, preferably by referencing Porter's 5 Forces or another well-established tool. Look for detailed breakdowns and analyses of each of it competitors, and of how the company is different and better than the competition in a particular niche. This section should include the regulatory environment and mention any costs or necessary delays associated with regulations.

Porter's 5 Forces is an evaluation model that looks closely at the five competitive forces at play in the business landscape. These forces are present in every industry and by evaluating how they manifest in an individual industry, one can gauge that industry's strengths and weaknesses. Porter's 5 Forces are:

• Competition in the industry
• Potential of new entrants in the industry
• Power of suppliers
• Power of customers
• Threat of substitutes

Evaluate the Leadership Team

Look for experience, integrity and passion in the executive team. Read bios and brief highlights of each executive's strengths and expertise should accompany standard business information such as headquarters and corporate structure. The company should have experienced advisers, either formally or informally.

It is paramount that the principals involved in the business convey their passion and drive toward success with this project. If the founders haven't invested their own capital into the business, or plan on keeping their “day jobs” while running the business, they might lack faith in the project.

Crunch the Numbers and Understand the Finances

Ensure that the financial projections are both promising and realistic. Most entrepreneurs vastly overstate their company's potential, starting with the market size and market share. Financial figures should be based on historical data if available, or very conservative projections if the company is not yet profitable. Entrepreneurs that project capturing 20% market share in the first two years probably have unrealistic expectations.

Investigate the returns provided by the investment. Good business plans include exit strategies for pulling the initial investment back out of the company, and have a realistic valuation of their shares.

View the Business Plan as a Living Document

Evaluate the business plan as a whole document, and as a reflection of a real-world company. Determine whether the market need is adequate, the company's offerings are compelling, the management team experienced and committed, and the financial statements realistic. Does this company as a whole have a chance of success?

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Your IdeaIs

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5 Essential Steps To Evaluating Your Business Idea

Erika Rasure is globally-recognized as a leading consumer economics subject matter expert, researcher, and educator. She is a financial therapist and transformational coach, with a special interest in helping women learn how to invest.

There's no doubt that America and other industrialized countries are small-business-friendly right now. In a year where elections around the world will play a key role in how economies continue to recover, there is at least one subject that most people agree on and that's small businesses. Politicians believe that small business is the key to economic growth and countries like the United States are passing legislation to make it easier for small businesses to thrive.

Robert Litan, economist from the Kauffman Foundation, the largest foundation in the world dedicated to the growth of small businesses, estimates that in order to add one percentage point to the United States' gross domestic product, or GDP, it would take 30 to 60 "home run" $1 billion companies.

Your business idea a home run idea? Being a successful small business owner doesn't require your company to be a $1 billion company, but entrepreneurs like to think big. National Federation of Independent Business Education Foundation (NFIB) estimates that only 40% of all small businesses are profitable and another 30% merely break even. These statistics prove that even with all of the incentives, it's difficult to turn your business in to one of those home run companies. Experts agree that you can improve your odds of success with careful preparation.

Identify the Need

What is the mission of your business? What is the need in the marketplace that you're filling and is it something that will appeal to a large portion of the population? Have you ever received a survey from a company asking you what you think of a product and if you would be likely to purchase the product and for how much?

This is the first step in market analysis . Don't just conduct an Internet survey. Go to a mall or other place where there are a lot of people and ask them to evaluate your idea.

How is your business different than others in the marketplace ? If you have competitors, what will make somebody come to your business instead of your competitor? Successful businesses have a USP or unique selling point that is used as the cornerstone of the business. The more you blend in the more you directly compete with others.

Avoiding the head to head competition, especially for a brand new business, is well advised.

Specifically, how big is your market? Does it include both males and females and people of all races and religions? How fast is the market growing or contracting?

If you design a product or service that only appeals to a small niche market, it will be difficult to gain enough market share to sustain a profitable business. It will also take a significant amount of advertising funds to find the people that comprise the niche market.

Based on your market analysis, how much of a market share do your competitors currently hold? What is left over for you or what is your strategy for taking share from them? Your business may have broad market appeal, but if the market is already saturated, the battle to gain customers may be too expensive.

Startups trying to manufacture new automobiles have found it exceedingly difficult to take market share from existing car companies. Evaluate whether that's a battle worth fighting and if you have the funds to fight it.

How much will it take to open your business? If you have family obligations, you'll probably have to pay yourself, adding additional costs to your budget. How will you get the money? Recently, Washington passed the JOBS Act, a law that made crowdfunding legal . This may provide a way for small businesses to gain funding without the use of banks or venture capital, but even with all of the recent legislation, businesses are finding it difficult to secure funding.

As an entrepreneur, your dream is likely centered around being one of those $1 billion or more businesses, but remember that many businesses fail and that's largely due to poor planning. Before investing a large amount of money in your business idea, create a plan and make sure that your idea is something that customers would be excited about purchasing. There are plenty of great opportunities waiting for a small business owner who follows a business startup system.

Top 6 Reasons New Businesses Fail

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The importance of knowing how to evaluate a strategic plan

Now that you know more precisely what strategic planning is and what it is for – with the help of Peter Drucker’s ideas – let’s take a look at some strategic planning objectives.

3 main objectives of strategic planning

Below are the main objectives and benefits of monitoring your organization’s strategic plan:

1- Ensuring that activities are being performed within the defined parameters

During the development of strategic planning, for each activity planned for the organization, necessary parameters for their accomplishment are considered.

Costs, execution time, financial, material and human resources needed, among others.

Now, while the plan is being put in place, the manager must make sure that all activities are being carried out within the proper parameters.

Rather than assessing, the manager must look at whether a change of course is required, and whether the parameters for any activity need to be rethought.

Ensuring activity progress helps set performance standards that indicate progress towards long-term goals, assesses people’s performance, and provides input for feedback.

2- Ensuring activities are consistent with company DNA

The soul of the organization is closely linked to its vision, mission and values.

Monitoring strategic planning is also a way to ensure that activities are being developed in accordance with the values that guide the organization and its organizational culture.

Since they are directly related to the organizational climate and the corporate image of the company.

Check out this unique Siteware infographic that shows the consequences of a misaligned organizational culture of strategic planning:

3- Assessing ability to achieve goals and identify problems

Analyzing both the internal and external workforce and the exchange of ideas is also important in measuring how well a company is able to achieve what was set for the period.

By comparing performance data with established standards, it is possible to visualize or anticipate possible bottlenecks in corporate daily life.

Why is monitoring strategic planning important?

When a company monitors its strategic planning closely, it ensures that its teams are doing a good job, committed to maintaining progress, and with proper records so they can be evaluated.

Here is another quote from a master, Ram Charan , to illustrate how monitoring strategic planning is critical.

“ 70% of strategies fail due to ineffectiveness. They rarely fail due to lack of intelligence or vision.”

That is, at the time of executing the plan, it is crucial to carry out strategic monitoring and evaluation of the planning systematically and constantly.

After all, if 70% of planning activities fail in execution, only strategic planning control and evaluation – with metrics – will allow errors to be detected and adjustments made.

The metrics a company uses to measure also indicate the quality of the year or period the company is in.

If necessary, from what is evaluated, it is possible to correct the current path, make investments, hire staff, seek technological tools, build partnerships, among many other solutions.

Monitoring is part of the strategic planning system primarily to keep track of what is happening.

And this is usually done through an analysis of regular operational and financial reports on a company’s activities.

The results of a strategic planning follow-up are:

• Incentive for continuous improvement;
• Provision of data on the impact of activities;
• Information for decision making.

The monitoring of strategic planning should be carried out based on the same indicators used when preparing strategic planning.

This also allows for process review as the company realizes that activities, internal and external relationships, customer approaches, etc. need to be modified.

Is it clear to you how important strategic planning and the control of action plans and activities are?

Examples of strategic planning indicators

You have seen that there is no way to monitor strategic planning without the use of indicators.

There are actually three types of indicators to consider in a company:

• Strategic Indicators:  They point to the future, the path the company is expected to follow, and are linked to the mission and vision of the business. They will be reached in the long term, between 3 and 5 years. After an analysis of internal and external scenarios and company differentials, with the help of SWOT analysis, strategic indicators are usually defined.
• Tactical Indicators:  are related to the actions of each area of the company. They make up an action plan that is effective in a shorter period than the strategic objectives, but should contribute to it. If tactical indicators are being met, there is a good chance that strategic objectives will also be met successfully.
• Operational Indicators:  short term. They are directly linked to the day-to-day operations in a company and the progress of the processes. Operational indicators are assigned to each employee to achieve the desired performance level that will make it possible to achieve tactical and strategic goals.

How do you define strategic planning indicators, anyway?

We have seen in the paragraphs above that strategic indicators have the following characteristics:

• Point to the future
• Achieved in the long term
• Linked to a company’s mission and vision
• Based on competitive differences

So, for example, it would make no sense to define strategic indicators like the following:

• Improve the efficiency of our production line by 15% next year.
• Increase sales by 10% by the end of June
• Hire new talent to fill 6 positions on the board by year’s end

These are typical examples of tactical indicators.

To get examples of strategic planning indicators, one must think of changes more linked to the company’s DNA, its mission to society.

Here is a short list of examples of strategic planning indicators:

• Launch 3 new product lines each year over the next 4 years to gain 35% more Share in Market X.
• Create a corporate university that meets our needs within a maximum of 2 years and institute university study support plans to enable our employees to have 85% of the workforce with a college degree and 50% with a postgraduate degree. 5 years.
• Deactivate business units with less than 20% profitability and use the proceeds from the sale of these assets to start an international expansion project by opening 1 unit in countries X, Y and Z and 3 units in country W within 4 years.

Challenges of following strategic planning

Now that it’s clear to you how to evaluate a strategic plan, let’s look at the challenges inherent in doing it.

If we consider that strategic planning is the consolidation of ideas, it is in the implementation of these ideas that the organization will obtain its results, as Charan pointed out.

That’s why it needs to be constantly reevaluated and rethought as corporate progresses.

The biggest challenge of strategic management is related to the ability to move the organization and keep it connected with what was proposed by the strategic plan, with the adaptability that this process requires.

Like every management function, this presupposes a permanent dynamic of planning, execution, monitoring, evaluation, adjustments and readjustments.

And if you want to know how to evaluate a strategic plan even more quickly and assertively, check out STRATWs One strategic planning software.

It enables a friendly view of your strategy map, making it easy to track indicators and goals and creating action plans for each one.

It makes it much easier to understand how to evaluate a strategic plan and monitor internal activities.

Revolutionize the management of your company with STRATWs One

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What is an evaluation of a strategic plan?

Navigating the strategy maze: Why and how to evaluate your strategic plan

Picture this: You've put together a strategic plan that's as detailed and ambitious as a blueprint for a moon landing. But here's the kicker – how do you ensure this plan isn't just a piece of high-fantasy fiction for your business? That's where the art and science of evaluating your strategic plan come into play. It's about making sure your strategy isn't just good on paper but is actually taking you where you need to go.

What does the evaluation of a strategic plan mean, really?

Think of evaluating your strategic plan as doing a reality check. It's about diving deep into what you've done, measuring it against what you hoped to achieve, and being brutally honest about what worked and what didn't. This isn't just ticking boxes next to your goals; it's about assessing if your strategic moves are truly aligning with the big-picture objectives, understanding the impact of your actions, and recalibrating your course as needed.

Why bother with strategic plan evaluation?

Simple – because you don't want to blindly follow a map that leads nowhere. Regular evaluations keep you agile, allowing you to pivot as needed in response to unexpected challenges or new opportunities. They help ensure your resources are spent wisely, foster a culture where everyone is accountable for outcomes, and ultimately, keep your business competitive and on track for success.

Timing is everything: When to evaluate your strategic plan

The million-dollar question is, when do you actually sit down to do this evaluation? Well, it's not a once-a-year, end-of-the-year kind of deal. Strategic plan evaluation is more of a pulse check that should happen at key moments:

Before full implementation: Once your plan is laid out, do a preliminary review before you go full steam ahead. This is a sanity check to ensure everything aligns and is feasible.

During implementation: Schedule regular check-ins, perhaps quarterly or even monthly, depending on the pace of your operations and the dynamics of your industry. These check-ins allow you to adjust tactics in real time, responding to internal shifts or external market pressures.

After major milestones: Whenever you hit a significant milestone, pause and evaluate. This could be after launching a new product, entering a new market, or at the end of a major campaign.

End of the strategic period: When your strategic timeframe has concluded, conduct a thorough evaluation to gather insights for future planning. This is about learning from your journey – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The how: Evaluating your strategic plan in 5 steps

Set clear metrics: Define what success looks like with specific, measurable goals.

Gather your data: Look at your performance, gather feedback, and get the numbers.

Compare reality to goals: How did you actually do compared to what you hoped to achieve?

Listen to the crowd: What are your customers, employees, and stakeholders saying? Their feedback is gold.

Plan your next moves: Based on your findings, what needs to change, continue, or stop?

Frameworks to guide you

Pick your evaluation toolkit wisely. Whether it's the Balanced Scorecard for a 360° view, SWOT Analysis for a quick health check, or PESTEL Analysis for scanning the external environment, each framework offers unique insights to help steer your strategy in the right direction.

Let's delve into the details of the Balanced Scorecard, SWOT Analysis, and PESTEL Analysis to understand how they can illuminate different aspects of your strategic journey.

Balanced Scorecard: A 360° view on performance

The Balanced Scorecard is your go-to for a comprehensive, bird's-eye view of your organization. It breaks down your strategic objectives into four key perspectives:

Financial: How do we look to our shareholders? This perspective focuses on financial performance metrics such as revenue growth, margins, and return on investment (ROI).

Customer: How do our customers see us? Here, you measure customer satisfaction, retention, and market share.

Internal Processes: What must we excel at? It evaluates the efficiency and effectiveness of the processes that create value for customers and shareholders.

Learning and Growth: Can we continue to improve and create value? This angle looks at the organization's ability to innovate and improve, measuring employee satisfaction and retention and the pace of improvement in internal processes.

Using a balanced scorecard template , you can ensure that your strategic plan addresses all critical aspects of your business, not just the bottom line.

SWOT Analysis: Identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats

SWOT Analysis is like taking a hard, honest look in the mirror. It helps you understand your organization's internal strengths and weaknesses, external opportunities and threats. Here's how it breaks down:

Strengths: What advantages does your organization have? Consider your unique resources, capabilities, and technology.

Weaknesses: What areas need improvement? Look at the gaps in your resources, processes, or capabilities.

Opportunities: What external factors can you leverage? Think about market trends, regulatory changes, or technological advancements that could benefit your strategy.

Threats: What challenges could you face? These could be competitors, economic downturns, or changes in consumer preferences.

By conducting a SWOT Analysis , you can craft a strategy that plays to your strengths, addresses your weaknesses, capitalizes on opportunities, and mitigates threats.

PESTEL Analysis: Scanning the external environment

PESTEL Analysis allows you to scan the horizon for external forces that could impact your strategy. It stands for:

Political: What political factors could influence your strategy? This includes government policies, trade restrictions, and political stability.

Economic: How do economic growth, exchange rates, and inflation affect your business?

Social: What social trends could impact your strategy? Demographic shifts, lifestyle changes, and consumer behaviors fall into this category.

Technological: How could technological advancements or disruptions affect your business?

Environmental: Could environmental concerns (like climate change or sustainability issues) influence your strategy?

Legal: What legal and regulatory frameworks could impact your operations?

PESTEL Analysis helps you anticipate external changes, ensuring your strategy remains relevant and resilient in the face of uncertainty.

By employing these frameworks, you can gain a multi-dimensional view of your strategic plan's performance. Each framework offers unique insights, helping you identify where you excel and where adjustments are needed. Whether looking at the broad picture with the Balanced Scorecard, taking a reflective look with SWOT, or scanning the horizon with PESTEL, these tools empower you to evaluate and refine your strategic plan effectively. Remember, the goal is not just to execute a strategy but to navigate your business toward long-term success and resilience.

Why Miro is your strategic planning tool

And here's where Miro comes into play. Imagine a strategic tool that helps you map out these sophisticated strategic plans and becomes your central hub for ongoing evaluation and collaboration. With Miro, you can visually track your progress, brainstorm adjustments, and engage your team every step of the way. It's like having a GPS for your strategy, ensuring you're always on the right path and making course corrections in real time.

In wrapping up, evaluating your strategic plan isn't about going through the motions; it's about ensuring your strategy lives and breathes along with your business. It keeps you aligned, adaptable, and ahead of the curve. With the right approach and Miro in your arsenal, you're not just planning for success; you're actively navigating your way toward it.

Discover more

What is a strategic roadmap?

The goal setting process for strategic planning

A guide to key performance indicators (KPI)

What is an OKR?

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Evaluation plan

An evaluation plan sets out the proposed details of an evaluation - what will be evaluated, how and when.

The evaluation plan should include information about what the evaluation is trying to do (what is to be evaluated, the purposes of the evaluation and key evaluation questions) and how it will be done (what data will be collected, how and when, how data will be analyzed, and how and when results will be reported).

This interactive guide aims to support decision making throughout the process of an evaluation, from planning its purpose and scope, designing it, conducting it, reporting findings and supporting the use of its findings. It includes an interactive Terms of Reference tool, the GeneraTOR, that can be used to document key decisions about an evaluation and create a customized Terms of Reference that can be downloaded as a word document.

This step-by-step guide helps organizations learn how to track the impact of their investment and plan forward strategically.

This handbook provides guidance for conducting and managing evaluations, including a conceptual framework for thinking about evaluation as a relevant and useful program tool.

This guide developed by Anne Markiewicz and Associates covers the core concepts involved in developing monitoring and evaluation frameworks.

The Rainbow Framework organises an evaluation into clusters of tasks. It can be used to plan an entire evaluation, or to undertake discrete tasks. The Rainbow Framework also prompts you with questions to help you plan the evaluation from start to finish.

These New Zealand Aid Program documents are designed to allow users to input data and information in a pre-formatted evaluation plan template.

Expand to view all resources related to 'Evaluation plan'

• W.K. Kellogg Foundation evaluation handbook

'Evaluation plan' is referenced in:

Framework/guide.

• Communication for Development (C4D) :  C4D: Develop planning documents (evaluation plans and M&E frameworks)
• Rainbow Framework :  Develop planning documents for the evaluation or M&E system
• National M&E Systems :  Supporting the use of M&E evidence

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Philanthropy

Strategic planning and evaluation: tools for realizing results.

To enable significant impact, organizations should ask three key questions and decide if formal planning and evaluation are the right approaches to finding the answers.

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By Paul Carttar Mar. 21, 2014

Nonprofit organizations are a stunningly diverse bunch, with assets ranging from hundreds of dollars to billions, service areas as varied as neighborhoods and the entire planet, and missions that encompass the full scope of human imagination and experience. But for all their differences, they are united in their desire to accomplish real results and in their need for funding—often from philanthropic individuals and institutions—to succeed in that ambition.

In a world where problems will always exceed the resources available to address them, philanthropy has a special responsibility to allocate its resources as effectively as possible to achieve significant social impact. With so many options and so much at stake, funding decisions will inevitably generate spirited debate, as is apparent in the simmering controversy over the significant increase in recent years of foundation support for formal processes such as strategic planning and evaluation. In particular, critics have made two major arguments against that funding choice: 1) that these processes simply cost too much, absorbing resources that would be better allocated to nonprofit programs that actually generate social impact, and 2) that many, if not most, of these efforts rely too heavily on simplistic goals and metrics that do not capture the true complexity and character of the intended social benefits.

Acknowledging that I am a planner by profession and that I previously headed up an Obama Administration program dedicated in large part to expanding the use of formal evaluations, I want to make three points.

First, despite their seemingly esoteric nature, strategic planning and evaluation are simply tools for optimizing performance. Used properly, they establish clarity around critical, basic questions that every nonprofit or foundation seeking impact should be highly motivated to confront:

• What social impact are we trying to achieve?
• What activities should we pursue to achieve our intended impact?
• How will we know if we’re succeeding?

I would argue that any nonprofit or foundation that can’t provide well-reasoned answers to these questions—however they determine those answers—has very dim prospects for accomplishing anything of real value to society, unless by chance.

Second, formal strategic planning and evaluation are not necessarily for everybody. Although all nonprofits and philanthropies should have solid answers to the questions above, there is no compelling reason for why they all should rely on systematic planning and evaluation processes to arrive at the answers. Those processes can be costly, though they’re not inherently so. Both encompass a wide range of approaches, from informal and intuitive assessments performed by internal staff to formal, rigorous analyses led by outside consultants. Whatever their degree of formality, their objective is the same: to enable nonprofits and philanthropies to develop increased confidence that their efforts are making a difference in the world.

So given their extraordinary diversity, when does it make most sense for nonprofits and foundations to undertake more formal, analytically rigorous, and, yes, costly strategic planning and evaluation processes? While there are many reasons for why impact-seeking organizations might desire greater confidence around resource-allocation decisions, the most compelling is simply scale. Put simply, the more money a nonprofit aspires to raise or a foundation contemplates providing for a particular program or intervention, the higher the opportunity cost—to the organizations involved and society overall—of being wrong about what approaches actually drive results. Plus, as scale grows, the real cost of systematic planning and evaluation, at least on a per-beneficiary basis, may become quite low.

The scale factor is particularly compelling, I believe, when the decision-maker is not actually the donor. It’s one thing for individuals to dedicate their own hard-earned money to support a given charitable pursuit. It’s another thing altogether when the people making funding decisions are using other people’s money. That, of course, is the case at many large private foundations (and all government agencies, for that matter). In such situations, fiduciaries and other stakeholders (and taxpayers) have a right to demand a high level of confidence that the organization’s decision-makers are deploying money wisely and to good effect.

Ultimately, nonprofits and foundations must decide based on their own circumstances what degree of formality their evaluation requires—or whether they value these processes at all. Following the logic laid out above, for example, where organizations are focused on pursuing more subtle or multifaceted changes in small-scale settings like neighborhoods and using the money of the people actively engaged in driving that change, the case for formal, rigorous strategic planning and evaluation simply doesn’t seem compelling.

Third, effective strategic planning and evaluation processes should yield robust, quantitative goals and metrics. Because the core purpose of these processes is to enable organizations to take productive actions, the goals and metrics that frame those actions must capture their most important elements and make it possible to monitor and measure them. And by definition, the metrics should be clear, precise, and quantitative whenever possible. That’s not always an easy task, but there can be no doubt that ambiguity is an enemy of focus, accountability, and learning.

Fortunately, a wide array of the most common social programs and interventions that philanthropies support at significant scale—job training, education, health services, home visitation, and teen pregnancy prevention, to name a few—are relatively straightforward and can be accurately assessed using discrete, quantifiable goals and metrics. Even where they are not—as might be the case with more complex or conceptual outcomes such as individual well-being, civic engagement, or social justice—skilled planners and evaluators can and must directly confront this complexity, possibly disaggregating concepts into elements that they can specify, track and measure in ways that still enable successful action while also respecting the organization’s true intent.

All that said, it’s inevitable that some strategic planning and evaluation processes will yield goals and metrics that may seem superficial or non-productive, and those interested in improving social sector effectiveness need to call them out and improve them. But organizations can’t abandon altogether the search for reliable metrics simply because the challenge of getting it right is arduous.

Still, the question remains: Are foundations and nonprofits overinvesting in strategic planning and evaluation? It’s possible that the pendulum has swung too far in some circumstances. But if so, this would still be a welcome change from prior decades when information about philanthropic aims and outcomes was scarce and rigorous strategic planning and evaluation hard to come by. Indeed, it’s sobering to contemplate how much money the social sector has wasted over the years because foundations or nonprofits unknowingly funded ineffective programs and interventions. When all is said and done, it is that specter that should inspire us to help our very diverse community of nonprofits and philanthropies find their best paths forward.

Support  SSIR ’s coverage of cross-sector solutions to global challenges.  Help us further the reach of innovative ideas.  Donate today .

Read more stories by Paul Carttar .

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• Section 5. Developing an Evaluation Plan

Chapter 36 Sections

• Section 1. A Framework for Program Evaluation: A Gateway to Tools
• Section 2. Community-based Participatory Research
• Section 3. Understanding Community Leadership, Evaluators, and Funders: What Are Their Interests?
• Section 4. Choosing Evaluators
• Section 6. Participatory Evaluation
• Main Section

Why should you have an evaluation plan?

After many late nights of hard work, more planning meetings than you care to remember, and many pots of coffee, your initiative has finally gotten off the ground. Congratulations! You have every reason to be proud of yourself and you should probably take a bit of a breather to avoid burnout. Don't rest on your laurels too long, though--your next step is to monitor the initiative's progress. If your initiative is working perfectly in every way, you deserve the satisfaction of knowing that. If adjustments need to be made to guarantee your success, you want to know about them so you can jump right in there and keep your hard work from going to waste. And, in the worst case scenario, you'll want to know if it's an utter failure so you can figure out the best way to cut your losses. For these reasons, evaluation is extremely important.

There's so much information on evaluation out there that it's easy for community groups to fall into the trap of just buying an evaluation handbook and following it to the letter. This might seem like the best way to go about it at first glance-- evaluation is a huge topic and it can be pretty intimidating. Unfortunately, if you resort to the "cookbook" approach to evaluation, you might find you end up collecting a lot of data that you analyze and then end up just filing it away, never to be seen or used again.

Instead, take a little time to think about what exactly you really want to know about the initiative. Your evaluation system should address simple questions that are important to your community, your staff, and (last but never least!) your funding partners. Try to think about financial and practical considerations when asking yourself what sort of questions you want answered. The best way to insure that you have the most productive evaluation possible is to come up with an evaluation plan.

Here are a few reasons why you should develop an evaluation plan:

• It guides you through each step of the process of evaluation
• It helps you decide what sort of information you and your stakeholders really need
• It keeps you from wasting time gathering information that isn't needed
• It helps you identify the best possible methods and strategies for getting the needed information
• It helps you come up with a reasonable and realistic timeline for evaluation
• Most importantly, it will help you improve your initiative!

When should you develop an evaluation plan?

As soon as possible! The best time to do this is before you implement the initiative. After that, you can do it anytime, but the earlier you develop it and begin to implement it, the better off your initiative will be, and the greater the outcomes will be at the end.

Remember, evaluation is more than just finding out if you did your job. It is important to use evaluation data to improve the initiative along the way.

What are the different types of stakeholders and what are their interests in your evaluation?

We'd all like to think that everyone is as interested in our initiative or project as we are, but unfortunately that isn't the case. For community health groups, there are basically three groups of people who might be identified as stakeholders (those who are interested, involved, and invested in the project or initiative in some way): community groups, grantmakers/funders, and university-based researchers. Take some time to make a list of your project or initiative's stakeholders, as well as which category they fall into.

What are the types of stakeholders?

• Community groups : Hey, that's you! Perhaps this is the most obvious category of stakeholders, because it includes the staff and/or volunteers involved in your initiative or project. It also includes the people directly affected by it--your targets and agents of change .
• Grantmakers and funders : Don't forget the folks that pay the bills! Most grantmakers and funders want to know how their money's being spent, so you'll find that they often have specific requirements about things they want you to evaluate. Check out all your current funders to see what kind of information they want you to be gathering. Better yet, find out what sort of information you'll need to have for any future grants you're considering applying for. It can't hurt!
• University-based researchers : This includes researchers and evaluators that your coalition or initiative may choose to bring in as consultants or full partners. Such researchers might be specialists in public health promotion, epidemiologists, behavioral scientists, specialists in evaluation, or some other academic field. Of course, not all community groups will work with university-based researchers on their projects, but if you choose to do so, they should have their own concerns, ideas, and questions for the evaluation. If you can't quite understand why you'd include these folks in your evaluation process, try thinking of them as auto mechanics--if you want them to help you make your car run better, you will of course include them in the diagnostic process. If you went to a mechanic and started ordering him around about how to fix your car without letting him check it out first, he'd probably get pretty annoyed with you. Same thing with your researchers and evaluators: it's important to include them in the evaluation development process if you really want them to help improve your initiative.

Each type of stakeholder will have a different perspective on your organization as well as what they want to learn from the evaluation. Every group is unique, and you may find that there are other sorts of stakeholders to consider with your own organization. Take some time to brainstorm about who your stakeholders are before you being making your evaluation plan.

What do they want to know about the evaluation?

While some information from the evaluation will be of use to all three groups of stakeholders, some will be needed by only one or two of the groups. Grantmakers and funders, for example, will usually want to know how many people were reached and served by the initiative, as well as whether the initiative had the community -level impact it intended to have. Community groups may want to use evaluation results to guide them in decisions about their programs, and where they are putting their efforts. University-based researchers will most likely be interested in proving whether any improvements in community health were definitely caused by your programs or initiatives; they may also want to study the overall structure of your group or initiative to identify the conditions under which success may be reached.

What decisions do they need to make, and how would they use the data to inform those decisions?

You and your stakeholders will probably be making decisions that affect your program or initiative based on the results of your evaluation, so you need to consider what those decisions will be. Your evaluation should yield honest and accurate information for you and your stakeholders; you'll need to be careful not to structure it in such a way that it exaggerates your success, and you'll need to be really careful not to structure it in such a way that it downplays your success!

Consider what sort of decisions you and your stakeholders will be making. Community groups will probably want to use the evaluation results to help them find ways to modify and improve your program or initiative. Grantmakers and funders will most likely be making decisions about how much funding to give you in the future, or even whether to continue funding your program at all (or any related programs). They may also think about whether to impose any requirements on you to get that program (e.g., a grantmaker tells you that your program may have its funding decreased unless you show an increase of services in a given area). University-based researchers will need to decide how they can best assist with plan development and data reporting.

You'll also want to consider how you and your stakeholders plan to balance costs and benefits. Evaluation should take up about 10--15% of your total budget. That may sound like a lot, but remember that evaluation is an essential tool for improving your initiative. When considering how to balance costs and benefits, ask yourself the following questions:

• What do you need to know?
• What is required by the community?
• What is required by funding?

How do you develop an evaluation plan?

There are four main steps to developing an evaluation plan:, clarifying program objectives and goals, developing evaluation questions, developing evaluation methods, setting up a timeline for evaluation activities.

The first step is to clarify the objectives and goals of your initiative. What are the main things you want to accomplish, and how have you set out to accomplish them? Clarifying these will help you identify which major program components should be evaluated. One way to do this is to make a table of program components and elements.

For our purposes, there are four main categories of evaluation questions. Let's look at some examples of possible questions and suggested methods to answer those questions. Later on, we'll tell you a bit more about what these methods are and how they work

• Possible questions : Who participates? Is there diversity among participants? Why do participants enter and leave your programs? Are there a variety of services and alternative activities generated? Do those most in need of help receive services? Are community members satisfied that the program meets local needs?
• Possible methods to answer those questions : monitoring system that tracks actions and accomplishments related to bringing about the mission of the initiative, member survey of satisfaction with goals, member survey of satisfaction with outcomes.
• Possible questions : How many people participate? How many hours are participants involved?
• Possible methods to answer those questions : monitoring system (see above), member survey of satisfaction with outcomes, goal attainment scaling.
• Possible questions : How has behavior changed as a result of participation in the program? Are participants satisfied with the experience? Were there any negative results from participation in the program?
• Possible methods to answer those questions: member survey of satisfaction with goals, member survey of satisfaction with outcomes, behavioral surveys, interviews with key participants.
• Possible questions : What resulted from the program? Were there any negative results from the program? Do the benefits of the program outweigh the costs?
• Possible methods to answer those questions : Behavioral surveys, interviews with key informants, community-level indicators.

Once you've come up with the questions you want to answer in your evaluation, the next step is to decide which methods will best address those questions. Here is a brief overview of some common evaluation methods and what they work best for.

Monitoring and feedback system

This method of evaluation has three main elements:

• Process measures : these tell you about what you did to implement your initiative;
• Outcome measures : these tell you about what the results were; and
• Observational system : this is whatever you do to keep track of the initiative while it's happening.

Member surveys about the initiative

When Ed Koch was mayor of New York City, his trademark call of "How am I doing?" was known all over the country. It might seem like an overly simple approach, but sometimes the best thing you can do to find out if you're doing a good job is to ask your members. This is best done through member surveys. There are three kinds of member surveys you're most likely to need to use at some point:

• Member survey of goals : done before the initiative begins - how do your members think you're going to do?
• Member survey of process : done during the initiative - how are you doing so far?
• Member survey of outcomes : done after the initiative is finished - how did you do?

Goal attainment report

If you want to know whether your proposed community changes were truly accomplished-- and we assume you do--your best bet may be to do a goal attainment report. Have your staff keep track of the date each time a community change mentioned in your action plan takes place. Later on, someone compiles this information (e.g., "Of our five goals, three were accomplished by the end of 1997.")

Behavioral surveys

Behavioral surveys help you find out what sort of risk behaviors people are taking part in and the level to which they're doing so. For example, if your coalition is working on an initiative to reduce car accidents in your area, one risk behavior to do a survey on will be drunk driving.

Interviews with key participants

Key participants - leaders in your community, people on your staff, etc. - have insights that you can really make use of. Interviewing them to get their viewpoints on critical points in the history of your initiative can help you learn more about the quality of your initiative, identify factors that affected the success or failure of certain events, provide you with a history of your initiative, and give you insight which you can use in planning and renewal efforts.

Community-level indicators of impact

These are tested-and-true markers that help you assess the ultimate outcome of your initiative. For substance use coalitions, for example, the U.S. Centers for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) and the Regional Drug Initiative in Oregon recommend several proven indicators (e.g., single-nighttime car crashes, emergency transports related to alcohol) which help coalitions figure out the extent of substance use in their communities. Studying community-level indicators helps you provide solid evidence of the effectiveness of your initiative and determine how successful key components have been.

When does evaluation need to begin?

Right now! Or at least at the beginning of the initiative! Evaluation isn't something you should wait to think about until after everything else has been done. To get an accurate, clear picture of what your group has been doing and how well you've been doing it, it's important to start paying attention to evaluation from the very start. If you're already part of the way into your initiative, however, don't scrap the idea of evaluation altogether--even if you start late, you can still gather information that could prove very useful to you in improving your initiative.

Outline questions for each stage of development of the initiative

We suggest completing a table listing:

• Key evaluation questions (the five categories listed above, with more specific questions within each category)
• Type of evaluation measures to be used to answer them (i.e., what kind of data you will need to answer the question?)
• Type of data collection (i.e., what evaluation methods you will use to collect this data)
• Experimental design (A way of ruling out threats to the validity - e.g., believability - of your data. This would include comparing the information you collect to a similar group that is not doing things exactly the way you are doing things.)

With this table, you can get a good overview of what sort of things you'll have to do in order to get the information you need.

When do feedback and reports need to be provided?

Whenever you feel it's appropriate. Of course, you will provide feedback and reports at the end of the evaluation, but you should also provide periodic feedback and reports throughout the duration of the project or initiative. In particular, since you should provide feedback and reports at meetings of your steering committee or overall coalition, find out ahead of time how often they'd like updates. Funding partners will want to know how the evaluation is going as well.

When should evaluation end?

Shortly after the end of the project - usually when the final report is due. Don't wait too long after the project has been completed to finish up your evaluation - it's best to do this while everything is still fresh in your mind and you can still get access to any information you might need.

What sort of products should you expect to get out of the evaluation?

The main product you'll want to come up with is a report that you can share with everyone involved. what should this report include.

• Effects expected by shareholders : Find out what key people want to know. Be sure to address any information that you know they're going to want to hear about!
• Differences in the behaviors of key individuals : Find out how your coalition's efforts have changed the behaviors of your targets and agents of change. Have any of your strategies caused people to cut down on risky behaviors, or increase behaviors that protect them from risk? Are key people in the community cooperating with your efforts?
• Differences in conditions in the community : Find out what has changed Is the public aware of your coalition or group's efforts? Do they support you? What steps are they taking to help you achieve your goals? Have your efforts caused any changes in local laws or practices?

You'll probably also include specific tools (i.e., brief reports summarizing data), annual reports, quarterly or monthly reports from the monitoring system, and anything else that is mutually agreed upon between the organization and the evaluation team.

What sort of standards should you follow?

Now that you've decided you're going to do an evaluation and have begun working on your plan, you've probably also had some questions about how to ensure that the evaluation will be as fair, accurate, and effective as possible. After all, evaluation is a big task, so you want to get it right. What standards should you use to make sure you do the best possible evaluation? In 1994, the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation issued a list of program evaluation standards that are widely used to regulate evaluations of educational and public health programs.The standards the committee outlined are for utility, feasibility, propriety, and accuracy. Consider using evaluation standards to make sure you do the best evaluation possible for your initiative.

Online Resource

The Action Catalogue is an online decision support tool that is intended to enable researchers, policy-makers and others wanting to conduct inclusive research, to find the method best suited for their specific project needs.

CDC Evaluation Resources  provides an extensive list of resources for evaluation, as well as links to key professional associations and key journals.

Developing an Evaluation Plan offers a sample evaluation plan provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Developing an Effective Evaluation Plan  is a workbook provided by the CDC. In addition to ample information on designing an evaluation plan, this book also provides worksheets as a step-by-step guide.

Evaluating Your Community-Based Program  is a handbook designed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and includes extensive material on a variety of topics related to evaluation.

GAO Designing Evaluations is a handbook provided by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It contains information about evaluation designs, approaches, and standards.

The Magenta Book - Guidance for Evaluation  provides an in-depth look at evaluation. Part A is designed for policy makers. It sets out what evaluation is, and what the benefits of good evaluation are. It explains in simple terms the requirements for good evaluation, and some straightforward steps that policy makers can take to make a good evaluation of their intervention more feasible. Part B is more technical, and is aimed at analysts and interested policy makers. It discusses in more detail the key steps to follow when planning and undertaking an evaluation and how to answer evaluation research questions using different evaluation research designs. It also discusses approaches to the interpretation and assimilation of evaluation evidence.

Plan an Evaluation  is an extensive guide provided by MEERA aimed at providing detailed information on planning an evaluation.

Using Data as an Equity Tool  is an Urban Institute resource which provides strategies and key practices which place-based organizations can use to build local data capacity with their partners, improve service provision and day-to-day operations, and amplify community voices.

Print Resources

Argyris, C., Putnam, R., & Smith, D.  (1990).  Action Science , Chapter 2, pp. 36-79. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Fawcett, S., in collaboration with Francisco, V., Paine-Andrews, A., Lewis, R., Richter, K., Harris, K., Williams, E., Berkley, J., Schultz, J., Fisher, J., & Lopez, C. (1993).  Work group evaluation handbook: Evaluating and supporting community initiatives for health and development . Lawrence, KS: Work Group on Health Promotion and Community Development, The University of Kansas.

Fawcett, S., Sterling, T., Paine, A., Harris, K., Francisco, V., Richter, K., Lewis, R., & Schmid, T. (1995).  Evaluating community efforts to prevent cardiovascular diseases . Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

Francisco, V., Fawcett, S., & Paine, A.  (1993).  A method for monitoring and evaluating community coalitions . Health Education Research: Theory and Practice, 8(3), 403-416.

Fetterman. (1996). Empowerment evaluation: An introduction to theory and practice. In D.M. Fetterman, S. J. Kaftarian, & A. Wandersman (eds.),  Empowerment Evaluation: Knowledge and Tools for Self-Assessment and Accountability , (3-46).

Green, L., & Kreuter, M. (1991). Evaluation and the accountable practitioner.  Health promotion planning , (2nd Ed.), (pp. 215-260). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company.

Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation. (1994).  The program evaluation standards . Evaluation Practice, 15, 334-336.

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What is Project Evaluation? The Complete Guide with Templates

Project evaluation is an important part of determining the success or failure of a project. Properly evaluating a project helps you understand what worked well and what could be improved for future projects. This blog post will provide an overview of key components of project evaluation and how to conduct effective evaluations.

What is Project Evaluation?

Project evaluation is a key part of assessing the success, progress and areas for improvement of a project. It involves determining how well a project is meeting its goals and objectives. Evaluation helps determine if a project is worth continuing, needs adjustments, or should be discontinued.

A good evaluation plan is developed at the start of a project. It outlines the criteria that will be used to judge the project’s performance and success. Evaluation criteria can include things like:

• Meeting timelines and budgets - Were milestones and deadlines met? Was the project completed within budget?
• Delivering expected outputs and outcomes - Were the intended products, results and benefits achieved?
• Satisfying stakeholder needs - Were customers, users and other stakeholders satisfied with the project results?
• Achieving quality standards - Were quality metrics and standards defined and met?
• Demonstrating effectiveness - Did the project accomplish its intended purpose?

Project evaluation provides valuable insights that can be applied to the current project and future projects. It helps organizations learn from their projects and continuously improve their processes and outcomes.

Project Evaluation Templates

These templates will help you evaluate your project by providing a clear structure to assess how it was planned, carried out, and what it achieved. Whether you’re managing the project, part of the team, or a stakeholder, these template assist in gathering information systematically for a thorough evaluation.

Project Evaluation Template 1

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Project Evaluation Template 2

Project Evaluation Methods

Project evaluation involves using various methods to assess the performance and impact of a project. The choice of methods depends on the nature of the project, its objectives, and the available resources. Here are some common project evaluation methods:

Pre-project evaluation

Pre-project evaluations are done before a project begins. This involves evaluating the project plan, scope, objectives, resources, and budget. This helps determine if the project is feasible and identifies any potential issues or risks upfront. It establishes a baseline for later evaluations.

Ongoing evaluation

Ongoing evaluations happen during the project lifecycle. Regular status reports track progress against the project plan, budget, and deadlines. Any deviations or issues are identified and corrective actions can be taken promptly. This allows projects to stay on track and make adjustments as needed.

Post-project evaluation

Post-project evaluations occur after a project is complete. This final assessment determines if the project objectives were achieved and customer requirements were met. Key metrics like timeliness, budget, and quality are examined. Lessons learned are documented to improve processes for future projects. Stakeholder feedback is gathered through surveys, interviews, or focus groups .

Project Evaluation Steps

When evaluating a project, there are several key steps you should follow. These steps will help you determine if the project was successful and identify areas for improvement in future initiatives.

Step 1: Set clear goals

The first step is establishing clear goals and objectives for the project before it begins. Make sure these objectives are SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Having clear goals from the outset provides a benchmark for measuring success later on.

Step 2: Monitor progress

Once the project is underway, the next step is monitoring progress. Check in regularly with your team to see if you’re on track to meet your objectives and deadlines. Identify and address any issues as early as possible before they become major roadblocks. Monitoring progress also allows you to course correct if needed.

Step 3: Collect data

After the project is complete, collect all relevant data and metrics. This includes both quantitative data like budget information, timelines and deliverables, as well customer feedback and qualitative data from surveys or interviews. Analyzing this data will show you how well the project performed against your original objectives.

Step 4: Analyze and interpret

Identify what worked well and what didn’t during the project. Highlight best practices to replicate and lessons learned to improve future initiatives. Get feedback from all stakeholders involved, including project team members, customers and management.

Step 5: Develop an action plan

Develop an action plan to apply what you’ve learned for the next project. Update processes, procedures and resource allocations based on your evaluation. Communicate changes across your organization and train employees on any new best practices. Implementing these changes will help you avoid similar issues the next time around.

Benefits of Project Evaluation

Project evaluation is a valuable tool for organizations, helping them learn, adapt, and improve their project outcomes over time. Here are some benefits of project evaluation.

• Helps in making informed decisions by providing a clear understanding of the project’s strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement.
• Holds the project team accountable for meeting goals and using resources effectively, fostering a sense of responsibility.
• Facilitates organizational learning by capturing valuable insights and lessons from both successful and challenging aspects of the project.
• Allows for the efficient allocation of resources by identifying areas where adjustments or reallocations may be needed.
• Provides evidence of the project’s value by assessing its impact, cost-effectiveness, and alignment with organizational objectives.
• Involves stakeholders in the evaluation process, fostering collaboration, and ensuring that diverse perspectives are considered.

Project Evaluation Best Practices

Follow these best practices to do a more effective and meaningful project evaluation, leading to better project outcomes and organizational learning.

• Clear objectives : Clearly define the goals and questions you want the evaluation to answer.
• Involve stakeholders : Include the perspectives of key stakeholders to ensure a comprehensive evaluation.
• Use appropriate methods : Choose evaluation methods that suit your objectives and available resources.
• Timely data collection : Collect data at relevant points in the project timeline to ensure accuracy and relevance.
• Thorough analysis : Analyze the collected data thoroughly to draw meaningful conclusions and insights.
• Actionable recommendations : Provide practical recommendations that can lead to tangible improvements in future projects.
• Learn and adapt : Use evaluation findings to learn from both successes and challenges, adapting practices for continuous improvement.
• Document lessons : Document lessons learned from the evaluation process for organizational knowledge and future reference.

How to Use Creately to Evaluate Your Projects

Use Creately’s visual collaboration platform to evaluate your project and improve communication, streamline collaboration, and provide a visual representation of project data effectively.

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Use the built-in project management tools to create, assign, and track tasks right on the canvas. Assign responsibilities, set due dates, and monitor progress with Agile Kanban boards, Gantt charts, timelines and more. Create task cards containing detailed information, descriptions, due dates, and assigned responsibilities.

Notes and attachments

Record additional details and attach documents, files, and screenshots related to your tasks and projects with per item integrated notes panel and custom data fields. Or easily embed files and attachments right on the workspace to centralize project information. Work together on project evaluation with teammates with full multiplayer text and visual collaboration.

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Get any number of participants on the same workspace and track their additions to the progress report in real-time. Collaborate with others in the project seamlessly with true multi-user collaboration features including synced previews and comments and discussion threads. Use Creately’s Microsoft Teams integration to brainstorm, plan, run projects during meetings.

Pre-made templates

Get a head start with ready-to-use progress evaluation templates and other project documentation templates available right inside the app. Explore 1000s more templates and examples for various scenarios in the community.

In summary, project evaluation is like a compass for projects, helping teams understand what worked well and what can be improved. It’s a tool that guides organizations to make better decisions and succeed in future projects. By learning from the past and continuously improving, project evaluation becomes a key factor in the ongoing journey of project management, ensuring teams stay on the path of excellence and growth.

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• What is a Work Breakdown Structure? and How To Create a WBS?
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Amanda Athuraliya is the communication specialist/content writer at Creately, online diagramming and collaboration tool. She is an avid reader, a budding writer and a passionate researcher who loves to write about all kinds of topics.

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Project Evaluation Process: Definition, Methods & Steps

Managing a project with copious moving parts can be challenging to say the least, but project evaluation is designed to make the process that much easier. Every project starts with careful planning —t his sets the stage for the execution phase of the project while estimations, plans and schedules guide the project team as they complete tasks and deliverables.

But even with the project evaluation process in place, managing a project successfully is not as simple as it sounds. Project managers need to keep track of costs , tasks and time during the entire project life cycle to make sure everything goes as planned. To do so, they utilize the project evaluation process and make use of project management software to help manage their team’s work in addition to planning and evaluating project performance.

What Is Project Evaluation?

Project evaluation is the process of measuring the success of a project, program or portfolio . This is done by gathering data about the project and using an evaluation method that allows evaluators to find performance improvement opportunities. Project evaluation is also critical to keep stakeholders updated on the project status and any changes that might be required to the budget or schedule.

Every aspect of the project such as costs, scope, risks or return on investment (ROI) is measured to determine if it’s proceeding as planned. If there are road bumps, this data can inform how projects can improve. Basically, you’re asking the project a series of questions designed to discover what is working, what can be improved and whether the project is useful. Tools such as project dashboards and trackers help in the evaluation process by making key data readily available.

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Project Review Template

Use this free Project Review Template for Word to manage your projects better.

The project evaluation process has been around as long as projects themselves. But when it comes to the science of project management , project evaluation can be broken down into three main types or methods: pre-project evaluation, ongoing evaluation and post-project evaluation. Let’s look at the project evaluation process, what it entails and how you can improve your technique.

Project Evaluation Criteria

The specific details of the project evaluation criteria vary from one project or one organization to another. In general terms, a project evaluation process goes over the project constraints including time, cost, scope, resources, risk and quality. In addition, organizations may add their own business goals, strategic objectives and other project metrics .

Project Evaluation Methods

There are three points in a project where evaluation is most needed. While you can evaluate your project at any time, these are points where you should have the process officially scheduled.

1. Pre-Project Evaluation

In a sense, you’re pre-evaluating your project when you write your project charter to pitch to the stakeholders. You cannot effectively plan, staff and control a new project if you’ve first not evaluated it. Pre-project evaluation is the only sure way you can determine the effectiveness of the project before executing it.

2. Ongoing Project Evaluation

To make sure your project is proceeding as planned and hitting all of the scheduling and budget milestones you’ve set, it’s crucial that you constantly monitor and report on your work in real-time. Only by using project metrics can you measure the success of your project and whether or not you’re meeting the project’s goals and objectives. It’s strongly recommended that you use project management dashboards and tracking tools for ongoing evaluation.

Related: Free Project Dashboard Template for Excel

3. Post-Project Evaluation

Think of this as a postmortem. Post-project evaluation is when you go through the project’s paperwork, interview the project team and principles and analyze all relevant data so you can understand what worked and what went wrong. Only by developing this clear picture can you resolve issues in upcoming projects.

Free Project Review Template for Word

The project review template for Word is the perfect way to evaluate your project, whether it’s an ongoing project evaluation or post-project. It takes a holistic approach to project evaluation and covers such areas as goals, risks, staffing, resources and more. Download yours today.

Project Evaluation Steps

Regardless of when you choose to run a project evaluation, the process always has four phases: planning, implementation, completion and dissemination of reports.

1. Planning

The ultimate goal of this step is to create a project evaluation plan, a document that explains all details of your organization’s project evaluation process. When planning for a project evaluation, it’s important to identify the stakeholders and what their short-and-long-term goals are. You must make sure that your goals and objectives for the project are clear, and it’s critical to have settled on criteria that will tell you whether these goals and objects are being met.

So, you’ll want to write a series of questions to pose to the stakeholders. These queries should include subjects such as the project framework, best practices and metrics that determine success.

By including the stakeholders in your project evaluation plan, you’ll receive direction during the course of the project while simultaneously developing a relationship with the stakeholders. They will get progress reports from you throughout the project life cycle , and by building this initial relationship, you’ll likely earn their belief that you can manage the project to their satisfaction.

2. Implementation

While the project is running, you must monitor all aspects to make sure you’re meeting the schedule and budget. One of the things you should monitor during the project is the percentage completed. This is something you should do when creating status reports and meeting with your team. To make sure you’re on track, hold the team accountable for delivering timely tasks and maintain baseline dates to know when tasks are due.

Don’t forget to keep an eye on quality. It doesn’t matter if you deliver the project within the allotted time frame if the product is poor. Maintain quality reviews, and don’t delegate that responsibility. Instead, take it on yourself.

Maintaining a close relationship with the project budget is just as important as tracking the schedule and quality. Keep an eye on costs. They will fluctuate throughout the project, so don’t panic. However, be transparent if you notice a need growing for more funds. Let your steering committee know as soon as possible, so there are no surprises.

3. Completion

When you’re done with your project, you still have work to do. You’ll want to take the data you gathered in the evaluation and learn from it so you can fix problems that you discovered in the process. Figure out the short- and long-term impacts of what you learned in the evaluation.

4. Reporting and Disseminating

Once the evaluation is complete, you need to record the results. To do so, you’ll create a project evaluation report, a document that provides lessons for the future. Deliver your report to your stakeholders to keep them updated on the project’s progress.

How are you going to disseminate the report? There might be a protocol for this already established in your organization. Perhaps the stakeholders prefer a meeting to get the results face-to-face. Or maybe they prefer PDFs with easy-to-read charts and graphs. Make sure that you know your audience and tailor your report to them.

Benefits of Project Evaluation

Project evaluation is always advisable and it can bring a wide array of benefits to your organization. As noted above, there are many aspects that can be measured through the project evaluation process. It’s up to you and your stakeholders to decide the most critical factors to consider. Here are some of the main benefits of implementing a project evaluation process.

• Better Project Management: Project evaluation helps you easily find areas of improvement when it comes to managing your costs , tasks, resources and time.
• Improves Team performance: Project evaluation allows you to keep track of your team’s performance and increases accountability.
• Better Project Planning: Helps you compare your project baseline against actual project performance for better planning and estimating.
• Helps with Stakeholder Management: Having a good relationship with stakeholders is key to success as a project manager. Creating a project evaluation report is very important to keep them updated.

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Rfqq 2024-16: needs assessment, service delivery plan, and evaluation.

• RFQQ 2024-16
• Title: Needs Assessment, Service Delivery Plan, and Evaluation
• Description:  OSPI seeks Consultants interested in participating on a project to conduct a statewide comprehensive needs assessment leading to the development of a three-year Service Delivery Plan (SDP) to be implemented 2025-2026 with an annual program evaluation of the SDP.
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Original research article, description of swine producer biosecurity planning for foreign animal disease preparedness using the secure pork supply framework.

• 1 Department of Veterinary Preventive Medicine, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States
• 2 Department of Population Health and Pathobiology, College of Veterinary Medicine, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, United States

Introduction: Preventing potential foreign animal diseases is a high priority, with re-emerging threats such as African Swine Fever emerging close to North American borders. The Secure Pork Supply (SPS) plan provides a voluntary framework for swine producer biosecurity planning and disease outbreak preparedness. However, biosecurity knowledge varies greatly among swine veterinarians, managers, and caretakers within the industry, which impacts the understanding, quality, implementation and biosecurity plan agreements with the SPS guidelines unless review procedures and quality control mechanisms are in place. Therefore, this study aimed to describe and identify the level of biosecurity planning agreements between producer-and/or swine veterinarian-made biosecurity plans for commercial swine sites and the SPS plan guidelines during a review process.

Material and methods: Biosecurity maps ( N = 368) and written plans ( N = 247) were obtained from six Midwest swine companies/veterinary clinics. Maps were evaluated on accuracy and placement of mandatory map features based on SPS guidelines, and discrepancies between the development of producer-made biosecurity maps and written biosecurity plans. Multivariable mixed logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify differences in SPS planning accuracy based on herd size, production stage, and characteristics related to geographical site location (e.g., land cover type and expected feral swine population density in the region).

Results: In this study, 55.8% (205/368) of all provided biosecurity maps had to be revised due to misplaced or missing map features. In addition, 80.9% (200/247) of the written plans had one or more conflicts with the corresponding biosecurity maps. The main biosecurity planning issues involved feed delivery activities, where the mapping of vehicle movements (89.9%, 222/247) were in direct conflict with the written SPS plans. Sites located in areas with a moderate expected feral swine population density had 3-fold increased odds of needing map revisions compared to sites with low expected feral swine population density. Sites located in predominately farmland had 7.3% lower odds of having biosecurity map and SPS plan conflicts for every 1.0% increase in farmland landcover in a 10-km radius around the swine site.

Discussion: Human oversight or lack of knowledge regarding biosecurity planning and implementation is common, which may culminate in important preparedness shortcomings in disease prevention and control strategies for U.S. swine farms. Future efforts should focus on additional biosecurity training for swine producers and veterinarians alongside with quality control benchmarking of producer made plans.

Introduction

The Secure Pork Supply (SPS) platform ( https://www.securepork.org ) aims to ensure a comprehensive and standardized continuity of business plan for the U.S swine industry in the event of a foreign animal disease outbreak, such as Foot-and-Mouth disease (FMD), Classical Swine Fever (CSF) or African Swine Fever (ASF) ( 1 ). Created through collaborative efforts between the swine industry, state and federal government officials, and University members (University of Minnesota and Iowa State University) and funded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA APHIS) and the National Pork Board, it provides swine producers a voluntary opportunity to access material and guidance in how to improve the level of biosecurity throughout their production systems. The SPS framework allows swine producers to create biosecurity maps and enhanced preparedness plans detailing the plan of action for each site during foreign disease outbreaks. Having readily available preparedness plans and biosecurity maps can improve participating swine producers' position to move animals to market during periods of partial industry lockdowns due to disease outbreaks or supply chain disruptions as seen during COVID-19 [e.g., ( 2 – 4 )]. Although the SPS platform provides comprehensive training videos and reading materials online, digesting and absorbing the provided information may be overwhelming and time consuming to both swine producers and swine veterinarians. The understanding, implementation and execution of biosecurity maps and plans needs to be high for the biosecurity benefits of these plans to be maximized ( 1 ). It has been previously reported that producers are more likely to implement biosecurity measures after reported outbreaks, such as swine influenza ( 5 ) or porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) ( 6 ) have already occurred. Thus, a combination of limited biosecurity understanding and planning issues may result in less-than-optimal executions and implementations of SPS plans; which would result in delayed responses to real world scenarios and complicate disease containment and eradication if a pathogen is introduced into the U.S. Complete biosecurity plans and associated data also allow for improved risk modeling for disease spread ( 7 , 8 ). Therefore, including data for factors that may facilitate the spread of disease is crucial to improve risk modeling and subsequent risk management. For instance, the inclusion of landcover compositions and feral swine population densities ( 9 , 10 ) around study sites or areas in risk modeling have shown to be important predictors for, but not limited to, spread of pathogens such as ASF ( 7 , 11 , 12 ), PRRSV ( 8 , 13 – 15 ), and pseudorabies ( 16 ). Thus, facilitating improved biosecurity knowledge and accurate implementation of producer-/veterinarian-made biosecurity plans are crucial to ensure that producers are prepared for existing local threats such as feral pig-derived pathogens or novel foreign animal diseases (FADs). Furthermore, a comprehensive understanding of both the local and regional landscape help health officials to effectively update existing models on disease risks and spread and to make key response decisions in case of FADs that threaten the U.S swine industry.

The objectives of this study were to (1) describe and identify biosecurity planning agreements and deviations from SPS guidelines in producer-and/or swine veterinarian made biosecurity plans for commercial swine producers in the Midwest during a review process, (2) investigate factors of interest including site size, landcover and local feral pig density on the occurrence of said biosecurity agreements and deviations. We hypothesized that the amount of biosecurity agreements and deviations from SPS guidelines would be different depending on swine site size, landcover, and local feral swine density.

Materials and methods

Secure pork supply guidelines, and biosecurity map and enhanced biosecurity plan development.

Swine farm managers, swine veterinarians and swine biosecurity managers in the Midwest were invited to participate in the SPS program and plan review through workshops, pork associations and investigator's professional network contacts. Data sharing agreements, data gathering and storage as well as contract signing for all participants were facilitated and hosted through a third-party pork association and stored on their two-factor authentication (2FA) cloud servers using Microsoft Teams (Microsoft Teams ® , Microsoft Corporation, 2023) for protection of sensitive information. In total, 368 swine sites across six production systems opted for enrollment in the study. All producer data was temporarily made accessible to the research team throughout the duration of the project. All participation was voluntary, with the long-term aim going beyond the scope of the study and encompassing the attempt to improve site's eligibility with regulatory bodies to move pigs during FAD outbreaks under the SPS plan for continuity of business. All participants were tasked with creating outlined site biosecurity maps containing biosecurity measures and restricted movements which would be in place in case of FADs, following the SPS criteria ( https://www.securepork.org/pork-producers/biosecurity/ ). All producer-made maps were professionally assessed, digitized, and mapped by project investigators using geographic information system software (QGIS 3.22.16, QGIS Geographic Information System. Open Source Geospatial Foundation Project http://qgis.org ). Each site assessment encompassed the completeness of the map, the correct placement of specific map features, the functionality of the complete map (including accessibility and practicality for farm movements of vehicles, live pig transports, and removal of deadstock) as well as its agreement with a site-specific written SPS plan. The SPS criteria included twelve features to be placed and implemented correctly on the biosecurity map ( Figure 1 ). Each biosecurity map, where applicable, included a site entry point (SE), a disinfection station (DCD), a perimeter buffer area (PBA) to outline the site area, lines of separation (LOS) to distinguish between structures housing pigs or used by swine caretakers, and other adjacent or auxiliary buildings structures not holding pigs on the site. In addition, all access points to be used during a disease outbreak had to be marked on the PBA (PBAAP) and LOS (LOSAP) outlines. Designated access points solely used for pigs such as loading chutes or designated loading docks (PBAAE) had to be marked for sites where it was specified that animal transports never entered the PBA for offloading of pigs. Finally, each loading area to be used during a disease outbreak (LC), each carcass removal path (CRP) and associated final or temporary carcass disposal area (CD), as well as all vehicle movements on the site (VM), and a designated parking areas (DPA) had to be placed on the biosecurity map ( Figure 1 ). The comprehensive written SPS plan included site demographics, a detailed biosecurity implementation plan corresponding to the biosecurity map layout, farm routines, and contact information ( Supplementary Presentation 1 ). For each site, the written SPS plans provided were reviewed and compared to the respective site map for agreements and inaccuracies between the two.

Figure 1 . Outline of a Secure Pork Supply biosecurity map for a Wean-to-finisher site with each of the required map features and associated legend based on RABapp™ standards ( 17 ). SE, site entry; DCD, designated cleaning and disinfection area; PBAAE, perimeter buffer area access entry for animals only; LOSAP, line of separation access point; PBAAP, perimeter buffer area access point; CRP, carcass removal path; LC, loading chute; VM, vehicle movements; LOS, line of separation; PBA, perimeter buffer area; DPA, designated parking area; CD, carcass disposal location.

Biosecurity map and written plan compliance evaluation

Compliance to the SPS framework was checked using the Rapid Access Biosecurity (RAB) app (RABapp™) ( 17 ). Briefly, the RABapp™ website-based application is in both industry and government sectors across 21 states serves as a platform for standardizing the approval of biosecurity plans and storing quality movement data. The RABapp™, is designed for use by State Animal Health Officials (SAHOs) and swine industry veterinarians. Through a user-interface, the RABapp™ provides stakeholders with a secure mechanism for uploading standardized biosecurity plans, which is subsequently processed through rigorous quality control procedures before is routed for SAHOs to undergo revision and approval ( 17 ).

For the purpose of the project, each swine site was evaluated based on two main criteria, (a) biosecurity map feature placement and implementation, and (b) consistency in implementation between biosecurity maps and SPS plans. Each biosecurity map was evaluated on whether all the mandatory features were placed on the map and if the placement of each of the map features were in line with the SPS plan and biosecurity guidelines ( Table 1 ). For instance, if a designated carcass disposal area was present on the biosecurity map but simultaneously placed in front of an animal loading area, or next to a feed bin, the biosecurity map would not follow SPS guidelines due to failure to provide accessibility for incoming animal- or feed transport vehicles, and for breaching biosecurity guidelines regarding proper management of deadstock. Each biosecurity map could disagree with the guidelines for one or multiple issues, but the number of individual violations within each map feature category was not quantified. In addition, each biosecurity map was compared to the written SPS plan provided together with the biosecurity map for consistency as well as any written discrepancies from what was depicted in the biosecurity map. For example, if the SPS plan stated that all feed bins would be filled from the outside of the PBA using an auger and no feed trucks were allowed to physically enter the site, but the biosecurity map had multiple feed bin locations both outside and inside the provided PBA and out of range of the feed trucks filling capabilities, this would be considered a discrepancy. Therefore, if the SPS plan did not accurately reflect what was depicted in the biosecurity map or vice versa, the issues were noted, and the site did not pass the initial review. If the biosecurity map and SPS plan agreed, but the provided biosecurity implementation did not follow the SPS guidelines (either within the map or written plan), the site did not pass the initial review.

Table 1 . Proportion ( n / N ) and percentage of missing and misplaced biosecurity map features, maps in need of revision, and in conflict with Secure Pork Supply (SPS) guidelines during an initial review of biosecurity maps for commercial swine sites ( N = 368) within six seine companies/veterinary clinics in the Midwest.

Landcover and feral swine density assessment

Using QGIS 3.22.16, all 368 swine site coordinates were plotted on a World Geodetic System (WGS84) projection. Using a publicly available landcover data set from the National Land Cover Data Base (NLCD 2021) obtained from the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) Consortium and The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) collaboration ( https://www.mrlc.gov/ ), landcover data from a 10-km (6.2-mile) buffer radius surrounding each site was extracted. The chosen buffer radius was based on the largest surveillance zone width recommended by the USDA African Swine Fever Response Plan “The Red Book” ( 18 ). The spatial resolution of the NLCD was 30 m 2 and contained 16 land cover types [Open water, Perennial ice and snow, Developed (open space), Developed (low intensity), Developed (medium intensity), Developed (high intensity), Barren land, Deciduous forest, Evergreen forest, Mixed forest, Shrub/Scrub, Grassland/herbaceous, Pasture/hay, Cultivated crops, Woody wetlands and Emergent herbaceous wetlands]. The developed land cover types represent urban environments.

An expected feral pig density data set was obtained from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Center for Epidemiology and Animal Health, Veterinary Services, Fort Collins, Colorado. The expected feral pig density data used in this study was derived from the predictive models and approximations developed and described in Lewis et al. ( 10 , 19 ). In brief, biotic and abiotic factors such as, but not limited to, landcover, land use, enhanced vegetation index (EVI), forest canopy cover, predation pressure, precipitation, humidity and temperature, were used in multiple linear regression models to predict feral pig distribution across both native and non-native ranges with the assumption made that the feral pig population had reached biological equilibrium. The outcome of the models provided expected feral pig densities based on local landscape factors and likelihood of the predictive distribution of feral pig populations. Additional details are described in Lewis et al. ( 10 ). All swine site coordinates were plotted in QGIS and a buffer area with a 10-km (6.2-mile) radius surrounding each swine site was created, as previously described, from which the average expected feral pig density estimation was extracted. The spatial resolution for the expected feral pig density data set was 1.0 km 2 , or the number of estimated feral pigs/km 2 . The expected feral pig population density ranges used in our study were based on previously set thresholds by ( 19 ), low = 0–2 pigs/km 2 ; moderate= 3–5 pigs/km 2 , and high = >5 pigs/km 2 ) for the contiguous U.S.

Statistical analysis

All descriptive statistics and statistical modeling were conducted using Stata (StataCorp, 2023. Stata Statistical Software: Release 15. College Station, TX:StataCorp LLC). Due to the low number of participating gilt development units (GDU), isolation and boar stud sites in the study, these were all grouped into one “mixed” production type category leaving a total of five production type categories (Sow, Mixed, Nursery, Finisher and Wean-to-finisher) for analysis. Collinearity between variables was assessed using Spearman correlation coefficient with a cut-off value of 0.60. Remaining continuous variables were visually controlled for linearity and functional form using locally weighted regression plots. Variables not meeting this condition were categorized using the median values. Herd size was categorized as ≤ 2,700 or >2,700 pigs. Landcover types were merged into four categories (1) Urban = Developed (open space), Developed (low intensity), Developed (medium intensity), Developed (high intensity, (2) Farmland = Pasture/hay, Cultivated crops, Barren land, Shrub/Scrub, and Grassland/herbaceous, (3) Forested = Deciduous forest, Evergreen forest, Mixed forest, and (4) Water = Open water, Woody wetlands and Emergent herbaceous wetlands. Additionally, as few swine sites ( n =3) were located in high expected feral pig density areas, the high and moderate density levels were merged into one, leaving a low- ( n = 327) and a moderate ( n = 31) expected feral swine density category.

Univariable mixed logistic regression models were built for each of the assessment statements listed in Table 1 , except for statements for which missing biosecurity map features did not occur (i.e., SE, PBA, LOS, DPA, VM). The univariable mixed logistic regression models were built using a dichotomous dependent variable structure (yes = 1; no = 0) with associations with a P -value <0.20 moving forward for consideration in multivariable modeling, in a backwards stepwise manner. Finally, a multivariable mixed logistic regression model was built for each of the assessment statements considered from the univariable modeling with, production type (Sow, Mixed, Nursery, Finisher, Wean-to-finisher), herd size (<2,700, ≥2,700), landcover (Urban, Farmland, Forested, and Water), and expected feral pig density (low, moderate) as independent variables and company/veterinary clinic used as a random effect. Variables in the multivariable model were deemed confounders and only kept in the final model if they changed the value of any other model coefficients by >20%, regardless of statistical significance. Statistical significance was declared at P < 0.05, and tendencies was declared at 0.05 ≤ P < 0.10.

Site population descriptives

Six swine companies/veterinary clinics of varying size totaling 368 sites with a mean (±SD) herd size of 2,659 (±1,408) pigs chose to participate in the study. Full details on production type and herd size distribution by company/clinic are presented in Table 2 . The landcover proportion (mean ± SD) within a 10-km radius surrounding the swine sites consisted predominantly of farmland (80.4 ± 11.0%) followed by forested areas (9.3 ± 10.4%), urban areas (8.3 ± 3.1%), and water (1.2 ± 2.8%) ( Table 3 ). Only 30.7% (133/368) of all swine sites had a designated urban area landcover within the 10-km buffer zone. The mean (± SD) distance to that closest urban area within the 10-km buffer zone was 7.8 (± 1.9) km. The mean (± SD) expected feral pig density for all sites was 1.5 (± 0.9) pigs/km 2 . 91.6% of sites were situated in a low expected feral pig density area with a mean of 1.2 (± 0.4) pigs/km 2 , while 8.4% of sites were situated in a moderate expected feral pig density area with a mean of 4.1 (± 0.7) pigs/km 2 .

Table 2 . Descriptive count of participating swine sites ( N = 368) per swine company/vet clinics (A–F) and production type with respective herd size estimates (median ± SD, min, max) for project participants.

Table 3 . Landcover (Farmland, Urban area, Forest, and Water) proportions (%) (median SD) of participating swine sites ( N = 368) in Ohio per production type category [Sow, Mixed (Boar Stud/Isolation/GDU), Nursery, Wean-to-finisher, and Finisher] within a 10-km radius.

Characterization of biosecurity agreements and deviations

Excluding the loading areas designated for animal use only (PBAAE) feature, which was lacking for all biosecurity maps except one, the overall number of biosecurity maps that needed revision due to at least one missing or misplaced feature was 205/368 (55.8%). The number of biosecurity maps that conflicted with the written SPS plan was 200/247 (80.9%). Please note that a lower number of sites were eligible for this subset analysis given an enhanced written plan was not provided for 121 (32.9%) sites. Sixteen sites (16/335, 4.8%) failed to provide a legible biosecurity map that was sufficient for proper revision. The main conflicts between biosecurity maps and written SPS plans were inconsistencies or conflicting information regarding PBAAE, and how feed and animal deliveries would occur during an FAD. Only one map (1/247, 0.4%) provided a PBAAE feature despite all written SPS plans stating these would be clearly indicated on the biosecurity map. For feed deliveries, a vast majority of written SPS plans (231/247, 93.5%) stated that feed delivery trucks would not be allowed to cross the PBA during a FAD. Out of the same SPS plans, 222/247 (89.9%) stated that feed bins were only allowed be filled from outside the PBA through an auguring process. However, 187/247 (75.7%) of the respective biosecurity maps had PBA's drawn that rendered feed bins inaccessible from the outside the PBA despite the use of an auger. Finally, 24/247 (9.7%) of the biosecurity maps had feed bins placed both inside and outside the PBA.

For animal deliveries, 50/247 (20.2%) of the SPS plans stated that trucks were allowed to cross into the PBA during an FAD; but from those, 16/50 (32.0%) written plans had contradictive statements that animal deliveries were not allowed to cross into the PBA. All sites placed the SE, PBA, LOS, PBAAP, LOSAP, DPA and VM features on their maps. A summary of the proportion of missing and misplaced biosecurity map features are summarized in Table 1 .

Results from the multivariable logistic regression models indicated that herd size, production type and feral swine density were predictors for the need for biosecurity maps' revisions due to missing or misplaced map features ( Table 4 ). Moreover, sites located in areas with a moderate expected feral swine density had a 3-fold increase in odds of needing revisions compared to sites located in areas with a low expected feral swine density (OR = 2.98, P = 0.031, Table 4 ). Nursery sites and larger sites had lower odds of needing revisions compared to sow sites (OR = 0.21, P = 0.03) and smaller sites (OR = 0.37, P = 0.029), respectively ( Table 4 ).

Table 4 . Final multivariable mixed logistic regression models for statements investigating predictors for commercial swine sites with (1) missing or misplaced biosecurity map features (yes/no), and (2) conflicting map and written biosecurity plans.

Herd size and production type were predictors for conflicts between the biosecurity maps and the written plan ( Table 4 ). Furthermore, sites located in a land cover predominantly consisting of farmland had 7.3% lower odds of having a conflict between the biosecurity map and the SPS plan for every additional percent of farmland within a 10-km radius around the site (OR = 0.93, P = 0.023, Table 4 ).

For multivariable modeling on individual missing biosecurity map features ( Table 1 ), only the final model for “missing designated loading chutes (LC)” had important predictors identified. The model indicated that all production types had lower odds of missing designated loading chutes on their biosecurity maps compared to sow sites [Mixed: OR = 0.11 (estimate) ± 0.06 (SE), 0.03–0.35 (95% CI), P < 0.001; Nursery: OR = 0.06 ± 0.03, 0.02–0.18, P < 0.001; (Wean-to-finisher: OR = 0.16 ± 0.07, 0.07–0.37, P < 0.001; Finisher: OR = 0.15 ± 0.07, 0.06–0.35, P < 0.001). A summary with statistically significant predictors and tendencies for misplaced features is shown in Table 5 .

Table 5 . Final multivariable mixed logistic regression models for statements investigating predictors for misplaced biosecurity map features (yes/no).

Numerous guidelines have been proposed for the development and implementation of biosecurity measures within swine farms, and a wealth of resources is available to swine producers and practitioners such as the USDA APHIS “ Protect our pigs ” ASF initiative ( 20 ), the Pork Checkoff Programs biosecurity training ( https://porkcheckoff.org/pork-production-management/biosecurity/ ), the Pork Information Gateway biosecurity resources ( https://porkgateway.org/resource/biosecurity-of-pigs-and-farm-security/ ) and the SPS plan for continuity of business ( https://www.securepork.org/ ). Despite the ready availability of such guidelines, there is a paucity of evaluations assessing the quality of these plans which is labor and time consuming for both producers and animal health officials, particularly concerning their applicability to FADs. This study strategically leveraged the implementation of the SPS, a voluntary platform, to systematically investigate potential biosecurity agreements or inconsistencies arising when end-users apply the information for the specific purpose of FAD preparedness. Our study showed a notable lack of consistency in the design of these plans at the site level, with more than half of the plans scrutinized exhibiting deficiencies requiring revisions, primarily attributed to suboptimal placement of biosecurity features required by the SPS platform. Remarkably, over 80% of the plans were identified with discrepancies between the biosecurity map scheme and the comprehensive written plan. These discrepancies are of critical concern, as they have the potential to result in delays and unintentional disease spread during emergencies. The challenges identified in our study underscore the imperative for robust oversight and quality assurance protocols during the development of biosecurity plans intended for deployment in response to FAD suspicions or confirmations. The responsibility for such oversight remains ambiguous, prompting the need to delineate whether herd veterinarians, animal health officials, or other stakeholders should assume this crucial role. Notably, even though biosecurity appears to be an essential requirement during an emergency situation in the U.S. ( 21 ), variations in resources and training opportunities across states further complicate the allocation of this responsibility.

Moreover, a recent survey study on swine producer biosecurity attitudes reported a high variability in SPS Plan biosecurity adoption and implementation. The study also reported that the likelihood of specific biosecurity practices was determined by individual producers' risk tolerance and perception of its feasibility and benefit to their operation ( 1 ). The dangers of producers' self-determination of what biosecurity they deem “sufficient” or what may cause inconveniences to their operation may not only provide a sense of false security but also thwart state mitigation efforts during FAD outbreaks. The survey reported that producers that suffered PRRSV or porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) outbreaks were more likely to encourage biosecurity adoption compared to producers that experienced no outbreaks ( 1 ).

The absence of a mandated framework, coupled with lack of standardized guidelines and accessible training resources ( 22 ), may impede the prioritization of intensive tasks associated with FAD preparedness in instances where the perceived threat of incursion is not imminent. It may also lead to high variability in biosecurity practices, which could complicate official response, as noted during an Emergency Preparedness Exercise conducted in Iowa ( 23 ). Therefore, additional efforts to motivate biosecurity implementation and preparedness in swine producers in lieu of lessons learned from disease impacts that may have been avoided should be encouraged. The RABapp™ consortium is an example of an effective platform to expedite the national standardization of biosecurity plans while also harmonizing entering of data by producer and individualized plan review electronically by state department of agricultures.

During the development of our project, even though the initial focus was on pre-review assessments, the study investigators invested supplementary efforts to guide producers in progressively refining these vital biosecurity plans. Through online consultations, real-time data sharing options, and secure revision mechanisms, we facilitated the seamless completion of tasks, ensuring alignment with established standards. Such supportive measures appeared to be integral considerations for future initiatives to uphold the quality of biosecurity plans. A recent publication reported effectiveness of an online educational website to improve biosecurity knowledge of swine producers and veterinarians, which could be another option for standardizing biosecurity plan-making ( 24 ). Moreover, we advocate for the involvement of decision-makers, such as state veterinarians and their official teams, in the review process prior to potential outbreaks, thereby fortifying the timely implementation of biosecurity measures in the face of emergent challenges.

Expected feral swine density in the area, herd size, and production type emerged as critical variables in our models influencing the accuracy of various biosecurity features. Notably, the observation that sites situated in regions characterized by moderate expected swine density exhibit increased odds of requiring biosecurity plan revisions in comparison to sites in areas of low anticipated feral swine density is a cause for concern. This is particularly noteworthy considering the well-established transmission of several swine diseases, including ASF, by wild pigs ( 25 , 26 ). Consequently, sites located in regions with moderate feral swine density may face an elevated risk of infection through potential direct or indirect contact with these wild animals, which, combined with potential biosecurity gaps, could lead to disastrous consequences. Considering these findings, a strategic recommendation emerges to prioritize regions with elevated disease introduction risk, for plan revisions. This proactive approach aligns with the overarching goal of enhancing the nation's preparedness for potential disease incursions, especially in areas where the threat of transmission from feral swine is heightened. Consistently, our analysis indicated that sow sites and sites with a larger animal population exhibit higher degree of challenges in the placement of biosecurity features on maps compared to other production types and smaller sites, respectively. Furthermore, these sites also appeared to have more inconsistencies when comparing the biosecurity map and corresponding written plans. We attribute this observation to the heightened complexity of these sites, necessitating meticulous planning and the consideration of numerous features. The significance of this finding lies in the potential “high consequence” associated with them when it comes to disease spread. Sow sites and larger facilities, by their increased production scale and service intensity, present more opportunities for unintentional pathogen transmission to other sites or agricultural facilities ( 27 ). Consequently, there is a critical need to prioritize the review of biosecurity plans for these high-consequence sites. Interestingly, this finding deviates from the common assumption that sow sites and larger facilities receive more attention regarding biosecurity measures ( 28 ). Our results suggest that despite the prevailing focus on these sites, there is still room for improvement and increased scrutiny in the planning and implementation of biosecurity measures to address the unique challenges posed by their complexity.

One of the strengths of this study is that individual site managers and veterinarians created their plans separately within each company using only their own knowledge, experience, and the allocated SPS guidelines and training resources without third-party interference. Thus, we are confident that we captured representative data regarding the local swine managers and veterinarians' capabilities to create SPS plans and maps at that moment in time using the available resources. Lastly, a distinctive contribution of this study is its pioneering analysis of compliance, gauged through the creation of biosecurity plans in adherence to specific guidelines. This aspect holds paramount significance, particularly in the context of prioritizing resources and efforts related to FAD preparedness. To the best of our knowledge, this study stands as the inaugural endeavor to provide evidence that actual creation of biosecurity plans in accordance with well-defined guidelines is complex and far-from-perfect in real-life conditions. This finding offers valuable insights for decision-makers tasked with optimizing resource allocation and strategic planning to enhance the nation's preparedness for potential FAD incursions.

This study is not without its limitations. First, its focus was disproportionately oriented toward large commercial sites in the area, leading to an underrepresentation of small to medium-sized producers. This skew can be partially attributed to the intrinsic nature of FAD biosecurity plans, which are encouraged to be developed in collaboration with herd veterinarians. Small to medium-scale producers commonly lack regular interactions with veterinarians, possibly contributing to their lower participation in the study. Moreover, it is plausible that this demographic, owing to the size of their operations, may have lower awareness and motivation to engage in FAD preparedness efforts, given that pork production may not constitute their primary or sole source of income. Another notable limitation pertains to the lower number of obtained written plans (compared to maps), preventing a comprehensive analysis of the full dataset for certain statistical models. The reluctance to provide written plans, often perceived as more demanding, could stem from the prioritization of other operational tasks within agricultural systems. While this limitation is acknowledged, it is important to note that the missing plans were specific to one production company. Efforts were made to address this by treating this clustering level as a random effect in our analysis. Finally, using a modeled expected feral swine density data set based on geography does not represent the true feral swine density for any given site, which may differ greatly locally across both years and seasons. Therefore, the results regarding feral swine density should be interpreted conservatively and as a theoretical guideline.

In conclusion, this study underscores the need for a rigorous evaluation of biosecurity plans in the context of FAD preparedness. The identified inconsistencies in plan design and execution highlight the importance of refining and standardizing biosecurity measures, ensuring their efficacy in mitigating the risks associated with potential disease outbreaks. Future efforts should be directed toward enhancing the comprehensiveness and alignment of biosecurity plans with the specific aim of addressing the challenges posed by FADs.

Data availability statement

The datasets presented in this article are not readily available because data sharing non-disclosure agreements with the industry collaborators and a third party industry organization prevents us from sharing this data. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to arruda.13@osu.edu .

Author contributions

MC: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. MH: Data curation, Investigation, Project administration, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. KM: Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Validation, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. JG: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Resources, Software, Validation, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. GM: Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. AA: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Software, Supervision, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing.

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding for this project was obtained by a National Disease Preparedness Program grant (AP21VSSP0000C021) and the Swine Biosecurity Research Fund (a fund established for donations at the Department of Preventive Veterinary Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine, The Ohio State University). RABApp™-related development and uses were funded by the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) award number FF-NIA21-0000000064, and by the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) through the National Animal Disease Preparedness and Response Program via a cooperative agreement between APHIS Veterinary Services (VS) and North Carolina State University, USDA-APHIS Awards AP22VSSP0000C004 and AP23VSSP0000C088.

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Dr. Ryan Miller at the center for Epidemiology and Animal Health at USDA APHIS:VS for providing us with valuable data of expected feral swine densities within our study area. We would also like to thank the Ohio Pork Council for their valuable time and resources in assisting with the project.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

The author(s) declared that two of the authors (AA and GM) were editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2024.1380623/full#supplementary-material

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Keywords: swine disease, review process, continuity of business, biosecurity planning, Secure Pork Supply

Citation: Campler MR, Hall M, Mills K, Galvis JA, Machado G and Arruda AG (2024) Description of swine producer biosecurity planning for foreign animal disease preparedness using the Secure Pork Supply framework. Front. Vet. Sci. 11:1380623. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2024.1380623

Received: 01 February 2024; Accepted: 08 April 2024; Published: 26 April 2024.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2024 Campler, Hall, Mills, Galvis, Machado and Arruda. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Andreia G. Arruda, arruda.13@osu.edu