The Story of the AEA Competencies Task Force (2015–2018)

This chapter tells the story of American Evaluation Association's (AEA's) Competencies Task Force. During the 1990s, the AEA Board addressed issues related to the professionalization of the field, but chose not to move ahead with the development of competencies. Twenty years later, the global expansion of evaluation led to increasing professionalization around the world. In 2015, AEA's Board created a Competencies Task Force to formally address the issue of developing evaluator competencies for the association. This chapter describes the three‐year development process: the Task Force formation, its processes, the multiple forms of feedback solicited and received, the eventual outcomes, and emerging follow‐up strategies. It ends with a critique of the process by addressing what we believe the Task Force did well and what, in hindsight, it might have done differently.