Iterating to Improve: Lessons from Rapid Cycle Learning with Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education Grant Recipients
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Iterating to Improve: Lessons from Rapid Cycle Learning with Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education Grant Recipients

OPRE Report #2023-054
Published: Jun 20, 2023
Publisher: Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Human Services Family Support Strengthening Families and Responsible Fatherhood Federal
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Associated Project

Strengthening the Implementation of Marriage and Relationship Programs

Time frame: 2019-2022

Prepared for:

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation

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Key Findings

In SIMR, ten Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education grant recipients conducted rapid cycle learning with Mathematica and Public Strategies staff to strengthen their services. Based on their experiences, grant recipient staff identified the following key ingredients for successful use of rapid cycle learning:

  • Orient your team towards improvement. Adopting a mindset of continuous improvement includes reexamining existing practices and being open to change. An orientation toward improvement helped grant recipients to be more open-minded to trying new or different ideas to solve key implementation challenges.
  • Find and focus on your team’s most important goal. Identifying a clear and motivating goal helped grant recipient teams foster a stronger team dynamic and kept all staff on the team engaged for the duration of the improvement effort.
  • Make space for innovation. Making space and time to discuss improvement efforts helped them more quickly and effectively respond to challenges, determine next steps, and monitor ongoing progress. Structured meeting time in SIMR provided teams with the opportunity to hear from all staff and draw on multiple perspectives to shape improvement decisions.
  • Collect and use data to inform improvements. Collecting feedback from staff and participants allowed teams to continuously tweak their strategies rather than waiting several months to deem a strategy successful or not.
  • Overcome the fear of change. Engaging in rapid cycle learning, with its emphasis on starting small and learning from failure, gave grant recipients space to be innovative and try out ideas they had considered in the past but had not implemented. According to grant recipients, the rapid cycle learning approach gave them the push they needed to try out a new strategy and learn to adjust it.

The essay aims to help other human services providers understand and use rapid cycle learning techniques to address their key challenges. It shares grant recipients’ perspectives and advice for conducting rapid cycle learning, based on their experiences in SIMR. Through video interviews, grant recipient staff share what they consider the key ingredients of success for addressing challenges using rapid cycle learning.

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