Measuring Success: Investigating the Meaning of Success and Failure for the World Bank in the Context of Fragile and Conflict-Affected States

This study takes a critical look at how World Bank project success is perceived and evaluated in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS), while simultaneously identifying lessons on ways that the Bank and task team leaders (TTLs) can best respond to the unique challenges of FCS. This executive summary provides an overview of the study’s findings and analysis.

Managing development projects in FCS represents a major challenge for the World Bank Group—one that many predict will become more pressing in the years to come. The Bank anticipates an expansion of its activities in FCS and is seeking to identify determinants that lead to greater success in FCS. In doing so, the Bank is also seeking to gain a better understanding of how progress is understood, determined, and measured in this unique context.

This study gathers and analyzes the perspectives of thirty TTLs who have all led projects in FCS. It focuses on their outlook for two reasons: firstly, because previous World Bank studies have identified project leadership as a significant determinant of success in FCS, and secondly because the Bank has hypothesized that the current metrics used in its extensive evaluations of projects in FCS may not adequately reflect all outcomes and, hence, may not sufficiently identify project-level determinants of these outcomes. Thus, the research phase of this study has kept an open mind about how World Bank success and failure is defined, while seeking input from TTLs on what skills and trade secrets had the biggest impact on their ability to foster development in FCS.