Imagine taking a car in and being told that the tires have worn thin and need to be replaced. You pay for the new tires; they put them on; and then, on the ride home, the car shakes and rattles. Worse yet, as you pull up to an intersection, you hear a strange “thunk.” You get out and discover that one of the tires has fallen off. The repair shop, it turns out, replaced the tires but did so in a shoddy way.

A different example – imagine that you hire contractor to build a new house to your specifications and within a specific budget and time line. What if the contractor used the wrong materials, added an extra room where you did not want it, left rooms half-painted, forgot to include a garage, and took two years longer than had been stipulated to complete the project? Unless you are among that rare group of individuals with the ability to let life's troubles roll off your back, you presumably would be upset. You also likely would be put in a difficult situation financially. Here, as with the car repair scenario, there was a clear failure to fully or appropriately execute an agreed-upon plan.

Framed in evaluation research terms, an implementation problem arose in both instances. The mechanic poorly implemented the correct approach for replacing car tires and the contractor failed to comply with a promise to follow a specific blueprint, to use specific materials, and to stay within a specified budget and time line.