Deciding what to measure

Every project is unique and therefore it is important to identify what to measure (i.e. indicators) and how it will be measured (M&E plan). Ideally, indicators and your M&E plan should be created together with your key stakeholders, including beneficiaries, community members, partners, donors, project team members etc. This will help ensure you are choosing the most relevant indicators to measure and putting efforts on data collection and analysis in the right places.  

Once you have chosen your indicators and outlined your M&E plan, it is also useful to articulate learning questions to help you understand and document the conditions for the change measured by the indicators throughout your project.

Tip: Don’t commit to monitoring too many indicators and keep your M&E plan manageable in relation to the amount of M&E capacity that the project has allocated. It is more beneficial to choose 5-10 indicators (depending on the size, scope and complexity of the project) that can be continuously monitored, analysed and reflected on by the project team and other stakeholders so that adjustments can be made based on this data and evidence collected. Identifying and committing to monitoring too many indicators can slow down the process for data collection and analysis which lessens the ability of this evidence and intelligence being funnelled into project decision making processes in “real-time”.