CHAPTER FIVE

PROJECT MONITORING
AND EVALUATION
Project Monitoring and Evaluation
What is the general purpose/goal of project
monitoring and evaluation?

To improve the performance

To check whether the project /program is
accomplishing its goals.

To identifies project weaknesses and strengths, areas

of the program that need revision, and areas of the
program that meet or exceed expectations.
Generally, its goal is to improve current and future
management of outputs, outcomes and impact.
Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is heavily
dependent on good planning.
If plans are properly developed at the start of a
project then M&E become much easier exercises to
plan and implement. M&E is considered at the
planning stage.

Effective monitoring and evaluating begins with good

project planning
What are the critical areas?
How and when can progress be measured?
Who gathers and reports information, to whom?
 Cont.….

Wherever possible it is important that M&E is

considered at the planning stage.
 This does not mean that M&E will always be
dominated by pre-planned objectives and indicators.
On the contrary, most good M&E systems are
designed to allow for the capture of unintended
consequences, positive or negative, as well as
intended ones.
However, if M&E is not considered properly at the
planning stage it may not even be possible to state
which activities or resulting changes were intended
and which were not!
Definition of Monitoring and Evaluation

Discussion
Try to define each term and
identify their differences.
Definition of Monitoring and Evaluation
What is Monitoring?
Continuous follow up of activities to ensure that they
are proceeding according to plan
Provides project managers and key stakeholders with
regular feedback and early indications of progress or
lack thereof in the achievement of intended results.
Tracks the actual performance against planned or
expected.
Involves collecting and analyzing data on project
processes and results.
Recommends corrective measures.
What is Evaluation?
A time-bound exercise.
Assess systematically and objectively the relevance,
performance and success, or the lack thereof, of ongoing
and completed projects.
Evaluation is undertaken selectively to answer specific
questions to guide decision-makers and/or Project
managers, and to provide information on whether
underlying theories and assumptions used in project
development were valid, what worked and what did not
work and why.
Evaluation commonly aims to determine the relevance,
validate of design, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and
sustainability of a project.
 Monitoring vs. Evaluation
Monitoring Evaluation

Why?  Check progress, ✓ Assess progress and worth,

✓ Inform decisions and
remedial action,
✓ Update project plans,
✓ Support accountability
When? Ongoing/continuous during
project/program
Who? Internal self assessment
✓ Identify lessons and
recommendations for longer-
term planning and
✓ Organizational learning;
✓ Provide accountability
Periodic: Mid-term, End term
Internal and or External

Link to Focus on inputs, activities, Focus on outcomes and

logical outputs and shorter-term overall goal i.e. relevance,
hierarch outcomes impact and sustainability
y
 Project monitoring
Monitoring typically requires putting in place of a systematic
information gathering and management system that can
check the progress of the project according to the plans drawn
up and objectives laid out.
Purpose and goals of project monitoring
Collect information regarding project quality
Support the stake holders in project implementation.
Lead the beneficiaries to possible solutions of the problems
detected in the implementation.
~ Be familiar with the real resources.
~ Assess the progress of the projects.
~ Disseminate examples of good practices.
Establish a close relation between the Stake holders and the
organization.
A complete monitoring system will have both progress
and process monitoring.

Project progress:
 Emphasis on physical achievements,
• Input-output monitoring or Target-achievement
monitoring

Project process:
 Emphasis on the way the target has been
achieved
 What to Monitor

 Inputs: Financial, Material, human resources

 Activities: A set of tasks performed
 Process: A set of activities, towards a common
purpose
 Deliverable output
 Quality
 Timeliness
Principles of developing Monitoring System:
 Simple and easy
 Participatory
 Not for policing or punishment rather for
learning
 Mix of qualitative and quantitative data
 Aggregation of data
 continuous feedback
 Meaningful use of analyzed information at
source
 During monitoring, we have to apply triple A process

Identify the “what”

Assessment

Action Analysis

Identify the “how”- agree on Identify the “why”

actions to improve the situation understanding the causes
Discussion
A supervisor during his field visit finds that there is an
interruption/delay on critical activities on the first
phase of the project cycle. He advises and orders them
to solve and finish on time with in the remaining time.
However in his next visit he finds that the situation has
not improved.

What is missing?
Project evaluation
 Project evaluation is a systematic and objective
assessment of an ongoing or completed project. The
aim is to determine the relevance and level of
achievement of project objectives, development
effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability.
Project evaluation and appraisal are often referred to
together as project assessment. Though appraisal and
evaluation deal with similar issues, they have a
different purpose and are performed in completely
different phases of a project.
Project appraisal is concerned with assessing, in
advance, whether a project is worthwhile and therefore
if it should be proceeded with. Appraisal is done before,
and as such is a predictive/prospective action.
It is related to defining objectives, ways to reach them, risks
involved and estimation of costs/benefits of each available
option. Project evaluation is done after, and involves analysis
of the past and looking at what was done and means to
improve it.
The process of project evaluation is concerned with assessing,
in a retrospective sense, the performance of a project after it
has been implemented and completed.
• Evaluation thus helps bring out elements of strength and
weakness, success or failure. The results are valuable in
planning future projects and in attempts to avoid repeating
or committing ‘mistakes’.
• The primary purpose of evaluation in project management is to
assess performance, reveal areas where the project deviates
from goals, and uncover extant or potential problems so they
can be corrected.
Common rationales for conducting project evaluation are:
To inform decisions on operations, policy, or strategy related to
ongoing or future program interventions;
To demonstrate accountability to decision-makers
To enable learning and contribute to the body of knowledge on
what works and what does not work and why;
To verify/improve program quality and management;
To identify successful strategies for extension/expansion/
replication;
To modify unsuccessful strategies;
To measure effects/benefits of program and project interventions;
To give stakeholders the opportunity to have a say in program
output and quality;
To justify/validate programs to donors, partners and other
constituencies
• Recognition of actual changes and progress made;
• Two kinds of evaluation occur in projects.
1) Formative evaluation
2) Summative evaluation

1) Formative evaluation:
Happens throughout the project life cycle and
provides information to guide corrective action.

Formative evaluation is designed to pilot the

project as it progresses.

It asks the questions “What is happening?” and

“How is the project proceeding?”
2) Summative evaluation:
Occurs after the project is completed and
focuses on the end product or result.
It is designed to appraise the project after
completion.
It addresses the questions “What happened?”
and “What were the results?”
GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATION (FIVE PHASES)

A: Planning the Evaluation

B: Selecting Appropriate Evaluation Methods

C: Collecting and Analyzing Information

D: Reporting Findings

E: Implementing Evaluation recommendations

PHASE A: PLANNING THE EVALUATION
 Determine the purpose of the evaluation.
 Decide on type of evaluation.
 Decide on who conducts evaluation (evaluation
team)
 Review existing information in program documents
including monitoring information.
 List the relevant information sources
Phase B: Selecting Appropriate Evaluation Methods
 Identify evaluation goals and objectives.
 Formulate evaluation questions and sub-questions
 Decide on the appropriate evaluation design
 Identify measurement standards
 Identify measurement indicators
 Develop an evaluation schedule
 Develop a budget for the evaluation.
PHASE C: COLLECTING AND ANALYSING
INFORMATION
 Develop data collection instruments
 Pre-test data collection instruments
 Undertake data collection activities
 Analyze data
 Interpret the data
PHASE D: REPORTING FINDINGS
 Write the evaluation report.
 Decide on the method of sharing the evaluation
results and on communication strategies.
 Share the draft report with stakeholders and revise as
needed to be followed by follow up.
 Disseminate evaluation report.
PHASE E: IMPLEMENTING EVALUATION
RECOMMENDATIONS
 Develop a new/revised implementation plan in
partnership with stakeholders.
 Monitor the implementation of evaluation
recommendations and report regularly on the
implementation progress.
 Plan the next evaluation
Thank you
and
Good Luck!