examples of monitering and evaluation systems

It assesses the degree to which the project meets the ultimate goal, rather than focusing on its management and delivery. Impact evaluation assesses the long term impact or behavioral changes as a result of a project and its interventions on the target community or population. It provides evidence of project success or failure to the stakeholders and donors to help them determine whether it makes sense to invest more time and money for project extension. Summative evaluation compares the actual outcome data with baseline data to determine whether the project was successful in producing the intended outcomes or bringing about the intended benefits to the target population. This occurs immediately after project conclusion to assess project efficacy and the instant changes manifested by its interventions. It measures the immediate effects or outcomes of the activities in the target population and helps to make improvements to increase the effectiveness of the project. This type of evaluation is conducted once the project activities have been implemented. This also helps to assess the long-term sustainability of the project.

Process evaluation is useful in identifying the shortcomings of a project while the project is still ongoing to make the necessary improvements. It assesses whether the project activities have been executed as intended and resulted in certain outputs. It is conducted as soon as the project implementation stage begins.

Its main purpose is to generate baseline data to investigate the need for the project, raise awareness of the initial project status, identify areas of concern and provide recommendations for project implementation and compliance. But depending on the nature of the project, it may also continue through the implementation stage.

This is generally conducted before the project implementation phase. It helps the project team to determine if the project is on the right track towards its intended results and whether there may be any unintended impacts. It gathers data to demonstrate a project’s overall effects and impacts on the target population. This is where monitoring entwines with evaluation. This is often conducted in combination with ‘process’ and ‘compliance’ monitoring and is crucial for accountability and reporting purposes.Īs the name suggests, organisational monitoring tracks institutional development, communication, collaboration, sustainability and capacity building within an organisation and with its partners and stakeholders in relation to project implementation. It tracks the real expenditure involved in a project in comparison to the allocated budget and helps the project team to form strategies to maximize outputs with minimal inputs. The main purpose of financial monitoring is to measure financial efficiency within a project. Beneficiary monitoring also tracks stakeholder complaints and feedback mechanism. It includes beneficiary satisfaction or complaints with the project and its components, including their participation, treatment, access to resources, whether these are equitable, and their overall experience of change. Its primary purpose is to track the overall perceptions of direct and indirect beneficiaries in relation to a project. This type of monitoring is sometimes referred to as ‘Beneficiary Contact Monitoring (BCM)’ and the need for this may arise at any stage of the project cycle. These assumptions and risks are external factors and are not within the control of the project, however, context monitoring helps us identify these on time to influence the success or failure of a project. Context monitoring helps us identify and measure risks, assumptions, or any unexpected situations that may arise within the institutional, political, financial, and policy context at any point during the project cycle. The need for compliance monitoring could arise at any stage of the project life cycle.Ĭontext monitoring is often called ‘situation monitoring.’ It tracks the overall setting in which the project operates. Just as the name suggests, the purpose of compliance monitoring is to ensure compliance with donor regulations, grant, contract requirements, local governmental regulations and laws, ethical standards, and most importantly compliance with the expected results of the project. It is often conducted in conjunction with compliance monitoring and feeds into the evaluation of impact. This is often referred to as ‘activity monitoring.’ Process monitoring is implemented during the initial stages of a project as its sole purpose is to track the use of inputs and resources, along with examining how activities and outputs are delivered.

Examples of monitering and evaluation systems