The History of the Future: evaluating projects and service developments before they begin

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe an evaluation tool, “The History of the Future” exercise, which can be used at the beginning of a project or service development to clarify variation in participants' presuppositions and expectations.Design/methodology/approach – The paper describes what the tool is, the context in which it is useful, how it is presented and administered, and what kinds of results can be expected. It places it within the corpus of qualitative methods, relating it particularly to phenomenography.Findings – A case study of the application of the method is used to illustrate its use and the results, which it can generate. A complex European Commission funded research and development project, eMapps.com, provided a challenging environment for its use and helped to verify its utility.Practical implications – The exercise is a particularly useful activity at the beginning of a large or complex project, which has multiple stakeholders, especially when they form a widely disperse...