POV: You’ve been working on a project for months and someone randomly stops to ask you:
1. How is the project going?
2. Is this project worth it?
If you find yourself struggling to answer these questions, your project might be lacking two critical components from your workplan - “Monitoring and Evaluation”.
Have you heard of them?
If not, let’s start with the basics: WHAT IS MONITORING AND EVALUATION REALLY?
Monitoring and Evaluation may also be referred to as M&E for short, or MEL – Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL), or even Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL). Don’t get confused – they all mean the same things - accountability and learning were just added to emphasize the use of this data to improve your outcomes and programmes. In other words, a pretty dashboard of your data is not enough, you have to learn from it too.
For now though, let’s just focus on the core terms “Monitoring and Evaluation”.
But wait, there are levels to this- although M&E are often joined, they are very different terms in practice. Let’s examine this more.
DEFINITIONS:
Firstly, let’s look at this definition of each according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2009):
Monitoring is said to be “a continuing function that uses systematic collection of data on specified indicators to provide management and the main stakeholders of an ongoing […] intervention with indications of the extent of progress and achievement of objectives and progress in the use of allocated funds”. The keywords to focus on here are ‘continuing’, ‘systematic’, ‘data collection’, and ‘progress’.
However, Evaluation is “the systematic and objective assessment of an ongoing or completed project, programme or policy, its design, implementation, and results. The aim is to determine the relevance and fulfilment of objectives, […] efficiency, effectiveness, impact, and sustainability. An evaluation should provide information that is credible and useful, enabling the incorporation of lessons learned into the decision-making process of both recipients and donors.”
That’s another mouthful but the important part to focus on is the aim of evaluation – the determination if broad programme objectives were fulfilled, and to support the institutionalization of lessons learned. There are different types of evaluation that you can use depending on several factors explored in our other blog What type of Programme Evaluation would be the best fit for me?.
Generally speaking, M&E are the processes that help you to keep account of all that is going on in your project and how well you are meeting your target and fulfilling objectives. They track your project inputs, outputs of your activities, and progress in beneficiaries over time. They go hand in hand – monitoring serves as your early warning system that provides a way to adjust, and course correct what is not going according to plan and provide recommendations for the future to ensure we meet the big picture.
DIFFERENCES
There are many differences between monitoring and evaluation however the core differences lie in the purpose, focus and timing of each which makes them distinct.
DIFFERENCES | MONITORING | EVALUATION |
PURPOSE (The motive for assessing) | This focuses on implementation progress Question: How many students attended the Weekend History Extra Classes this year? | This focuses on ‘effectiveness’ and ‘efficiency’ of implementation activities Question: Did students History grades improve in their Final Exam after being a part of the Weekend History Extra Classes for a year?” |
FOCUS (What project areas are involved?) | Inputs, Outputs, Activities | Outcomes, Impacts and Overall goal |
TIMING (When is it done ?) | Routine/Continuous (Daily, Weekly, Monthly) | Episodic/Intermittent (Mid- Project, End-of-year, Every other year) |
| Focuses on what is presently happening | Focuses on what worked well or could have worked better in what has happened |
| Happens DURING the project | Happens DURING and/or AFTER the project is completed. |
SIMILARITIES
Although distinctive from each other there are a few similarities.
SIMILARITIES | "MONITORING” AND “EVALUATION” |
ESSENCE | Both processes in essence are tracking, and assessment like in their activities |
METHODS/TOOLS | Both processes use similar data collection sources and methods throughout the life of the projects. For example, registers, receipts, questionnaires/surveys, interviews, spreadsheets, databases etc. |
AIM | Both activities strive to account for the project process and improve it. |
Monitoring and Evaluation are critical management functions of a project. Just like any part of a project, business or programme plan that includes a budget, key activities, key inputs, action plans- the monitoring and evaluation plan is also critical to be placed in your master plan from the beginning. For more information on M&E check out our other blog Monitoring & Evaluation and Why you need it or you can contact us and let us help you figure it all out.
Sources:
OECD (2017), "Monitoring and evaluation of open government strategies", in Government at a Glance 2017, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/gov_glance-2017-66-en.