Full Implementation — Smooth, Effective Program Delivery

The Too Good Implementation Center is a guide of the five phases of implementing an effective prevention education strategy including phases for Program Exploration, Installation, Initial Implementation, Full Implementation, and Sustainability.  Our five-part Implementation Blog series has covered the first three phases in recent weeks, and this week, we’ll dive into the Full Implementation Phase where all of the preparation and planning efforts will culminate in a smooth, effective program delivery effort.

By the end of the Initial Implementation phase, the Implementation Team’s observations and data collected from the pilot lesson delivery should yield a great deal of insight into how planning and coordination efforts will perform in practice. Unexpected barriers to lesson delivery should have presented themselves during the pilot and be addressed before regular lesson delivery begins. In some cases, the necessary changes to implementation planning and procedures may require a second pilot delivery before an implementation is ready for a system wide roll out. At the end of a successful pilot, you will have established a system of quality assurance and made adjustments to protocols and procedures to ensure a high fidelity of implementation once you expand to all of your sites.

The idea here is to build quality of delivery into the system.

When the final preparations for staff assignment, training, and development are completed and your team is fine tuning procedures to monitor and support program delivery, you are ready for the Full Implementation Phase. The idea here is to build quality of delivery into the system. The program will need to be fully integrated into your system’s delivery sites. Therefore, regular monitoring and data collection are necessary to reveal program drift or other threats to your fidelity of implementation.

Staff orientation activities and training should be complete prior to the start of regular lesson delivery, but technical assistance and coaching should continue well into the Full Implementation Phase. Consistent and ongoing coaching for line staff and practitioners is critical to implementation success. Teaching staff are learning new procedures and will be mastering new content and will need regular feedback on their performance and adherence to the fidelity model. Coaches can provide immediate feedback and support to practitioners and staff to help the team minimize drift, increase positive program perceptions, and enhance skills development. Coaching also helps manage expectations and normalize lesson delivery practices and boost monitoring outcomes with ongoing technical assistance.

As regular lesson delivery ensues, you will need to understand the impact of your system processes, training, and coaching efforts. The Implementation Team will begin to report process outcomes and student outcomes data to your funding source if required and ensure your implementation is prepared for sustainability over time. Expect to use the outcomes data to inform a regular quality improvement effort within your system. Understanding the effects of planned and unplanned events on your system of change will inform your efforts to make small adjustments to better adapt to the real world environment your teams are working in. As a result, program delivery will be more efficient and your team will have the confidence, cohesion, and support to deliver the program with a high degree of fidelity.

The investment in preparation to this point will begin to pay dividends as program delivery is running smoothly. Planning for the long term sustainability of those investments will insure lasting effects, but it requires nurturing of your implementation program. Regular delivery support through a consistent feedback loop of coaching and monitoring and feedback from instructors will maximize fidelity of implementation and ultimately improved student outcomes. We will talk about building in sustainability in the next installment of this series.