Project Management and Evaluation free essay sample

QTN†¦Ã¢â‚¬Å"If Monitoring and Evaluation is to be useful to managers, donors, participants and citizens, then the work must be honest, objective and fair. Data must be collected accurately and reporting done truthfully†. Monitoring and evaluation serves as an essential tool for ensuring sound management within the lifetime of projects or policies. There are certain activities that must be done to put into consideration the cost, time, feasibility and useful means in relation to identifying the maximum amount of information needed to meet the need of monitoring and evaluation. In essence, there should be comprehensive information that cover the full range of the required inputs, outputs, outcomes and impacts which should focus on the monitoring and evaluation purposes. Essentially the vitalness of monitoring and evaluation will be reflected upon the collection of data and information which are relevant, efficient, effective and sustainable, in relation to the aims and objectives which the stakeholders of the project or policy needed in accordance with their interest. We will write a custom essay sample on Project Management and Evaluation or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page For monitoring and evaluation to become valuable to managers, donors, participants and citizens, then the effort must, be straightforward, purposive and reasonable. It is the obligation of those involved in such activities of monitoring and evaluation to make sure that the data are collected accurately and that reporting is undertaken truthfully. The essay focus on discussing monitoring and evaluation work which constitutes honesty, objectivity, and fairness in relation to how useful it can be to managers, donors, participants and citizens. Also too, the collection of accurate data and undertaking truthful reporting which could be essentially important to undertake necessary adjustment within the lifetime of projects. Initially, it will base discussion on the usefulness of carrying out honest work of monitoring and evaluation and the significance it stresses, in relation to managers, donors, participants and the citizens. Moreover, it discusses the vitalness of undertaking the work which reflects the objectives. Furthermore, the usefulness of carrying out fair work, and finally, it focus on the essence of accurate data collection and undertaking truthful reporting on feedbacks of projects or policies. To start of with, monitoring and evaluation focus on searching for answers about development interventions that can be done at different times in the life cycle of the project, therefore any necessary requirements should be undertaken carefully. The work involves gathering, analysing, interpreting and reporting information on project performances. For instance, the work of monitoring and evaluation are important to such extent as providing the stakeholders with better means for learning from past experiences, improving service delivery, planning and allocating resources and demonstrating results as part of accountability to key stakeholders. Managers, donors, participants and citizens each perform certain distinctive roles and interests in which they emphasise on various perspectives in response to the work of monitoring and evaluation. The work of monitoring and evaluation can be essentially vital for managers who oversee implementation, donors and other decision makers who influence or decide the course of action related to the project. The citizens whose situations the project seeks to change and participants who implement actions of the project (Wobiro, A. 2002; p47). For monitoring and evaluation to be advantageous, then the work must be honest, objective and fair, and so there should be precise data collection and reporting to be carried out truthfully in such a way it will be significant to concerned audiences. The work of monitoring and evaluation should be honest to ensure honesty and integrity in having respect to the safekeeping, dignity and self-worth of respondents to surveys, the project participants, citizens and other stakeholders they interconnect with. Knowing that a lot may be at stake for a project, it is not surprising that some people may try to influence the way information is presented or the recommendations that are made. Wobiro, A. (2004:p79), argues that†¦Ã¢â‚¬Å"While most of those carrying out the work of monitoring and evaluation would easily recognise bribe (and reject it), though it is not always easy to recognise more subtle forms of influence†. It is the responsibility of those who undertake the work of monitoring and evaluation to ensure that data on project performances are appropriately being collected and that the reporting is done truthfully to provide information to outside audience. For instance, different audience need different information on what concerns them in relation to the project performances, even when addressing the same issues. To paraphrase Kellogg Foundation (2002:p97), the distribution of honest information about the project to outside audiences can be vital as it does serve many purposes. The managers can indulge on improving the effective means on the functioning of related projects and organisation, providing an accounting purposes to donors and the regulatory bodies, convincing diverse audiences of the project’s importance, and generating further support for the projects being implemented. A monitoring and evaluation work that sits on someone’s shelf will not lead to develop project design and management. Therefore, carrying out honest monitoring and evaluation work can be effective as it does provide usable information that the project staff and other stakeholders can utilize directly to make decisions about the project. Moreover, for the work of monitoring and evaluation is to be proved useful to the responsible bodies, then it must reflect its objectives. Monitoring and evaluation that is to be usable must essentially being centred on the questions concerning the progress of the project under investigation, thus its objectives must be stated clearly as to reflect the information which the key stakeholders need to acquire. The performance based monitoring and evaluation concerns the assessment, as organized and objective as potential of intentional, enduring, or accomplished project. For example, the work is intended to define that whether the project still relevant to the problem, being considered efficient, effectively undertaken, impact, and sustainability of the project so as to incorporate lessons learned into the decision making process by the managers and other important decision makers. The work of monitoring and evaluation in essence provides worthwhile responses to managers, donors, participants and the citizens as it informs decisions on operations or activities that are related to ongoing or future project intervention. According to Rossi and Freeman, (1989:p45)†¦ â€Å"The work is for management and administrative purposes, to assess the appropriateness of program changes, to identify ways to improve the service delivery of interventions or to meet the accountability requirements for funding groups†. With the essence of the work being objectively undertaken, the project management and administration will have to, in their day to day conduct their undertakings as competently as possible. The managers and supervisors, who have reputations for wasting funds, improperly using staff resources, and in other ways being efficient, regularly endanger not only their own positions but the futures of their projects. The systematic response of objective work of monitoring and evaluation will serve as a influential tools that enables project managers to document the functioning efficiency of organisation, for easing the ways staff are employed, for requesting for the project support and, and for defending the performance of the project compared to those undertaken by the other organisations is the same social program sector. Similarly, project donors and the other stakeholders have need of evidence that what was paid for and considered necessary was actually undertaken concern over the lack of accountability of projects, particular public project continues to intensify . For instance, the objective work could be essentially vital to stakeholders as it can cater to empower corporate learning and contribute to the body of knowledge on what works, what does not and why, therefore there can be informed decisions on operations or strategy related to ongoing or future project intervention. The participants, with regards to the information needed, will be concerned with the impact or outcome of the project implementation to consider effective strategies to carry out the activities of monitoring and evaluation effectively and efficiently. The monitoring and evaluation work will pursue to measure project sound effects in relative to its specified goals, whether and to what degree the project’s inputs and services are improving the quality of people’s lives. It provides information on the changes in the behaviour and conditions of targeted communities and individuals (Rossi and Freeman, 1992; p26) by assessing the effectiveness of the project in attaining its originally stated intermediate and overall objectives. Though the project monitoring and evaluation undoubtedly aids the interests of the funders, project managers, staff, and the beneficiaries, all of whom benefit from a process that advances project actions, each of these groups might resist an impact evaluation out of concern that the result might be negative. For instance, the funders might have to admit to mistakes in judgment; project managers and staff might consider their jobs threatened; beneficiaries, if they are receiving food or other goods or services may fear their loss. Overpowering such resistance to monitoring and evaluation is not always possible, but experience suggests that resistance can be reduced if the stakeholders of a project are involved in planning for the evaluation and reviewing monitoring and evaluation data as they are being compiled. Furthermore, for the work of monitoring and evaluation to become useful, then it should be done fairly in its examination and recording of strengths and weakness of the project being monitored and evaluated, so that strengths can be built upon and problems addressed. Those involve in the monitoring and evaluation activities should make certain that the complete set of the findings along with relatable limitation are made accessible to the audience affected by the monitoring and evaluation, and any other expressed permissible privileges to receive the results. The managers to the project, donors, participants and the citizens need to have a fairly accomplished wealth of information, so that each of them essentially have the opportunity to articulate and present their needs, interests and expectations related to the project. For instance, the fair work of monitoring and evaluation aids the manager of projects to make sound management decisions to promote and made effective a more efficient allocation of resources and so, the participants can indulge in putting in place related corrective measures through implementation performance. As highlighted in the United Nation Population Fund (2001; p3), â€Å"The work gives the stakeholders a sense of ownership over monitoring and evaluation results, thus promoting their use to improve decision making, and so increases the understanding of stakeholders of their own project strategy and processes, what works, does not work and why. † The donors to the project needs accountability on the uses of funds they lend and likewise the population will expect the work to be fair as they are engaged with the growing interest that their situation seeks to change from benefits of the project outcomes. Finally, the collection of data to be carried out accurately and that reporting should be undertaken truthfully. The aim should be to identify the minimum amount of new information needed to meet the monitoring and evaluation needs. For all intents and purposes, the considerations of cost, time, feasibility and useful means must need to be very carefully selective in what was collected. The first consideration in any data collection process is to identify existing data and assess its quality. There may be existing monitoring and evaluation documentation or there may be data generated through existing reporting or budget control systems that can be adopted for the new monitoring and evaluation purposes. For example, if a project has to make regular accounting reports to the government or declare all purchases to a head office, this sort of data that you should first use. According to Wobiro, A. (2002; p32) â€Å"The collection of new data and the setting up of new monitoring and evaluation activities should only take place if existing processes cannot answer the questions that have been raised†. There is always existed a danger of creating masses of needless data that leads stakeholders to say â€Å"so what†. It is the occupations of those involve in monitoring and evaluation to ensure the data are collected accurately and reporting is done truthfully. Monitoring and evaluation activities usually engage mutually quantitative and qualitative data and most collection method involve some aspect of both. For example, you may decide to do a survey, a typical qualitative method to get people’s opinion about the outcome of a project. But to do this survey, you must make decisions about the outcome of how you choose those people and when you finish the survey you must analyse it to allow you to describe what the majority and minority opinions were. These actions require you to apply quantitative method of data collection. Additionally, the reporting on the work of monitoring and evaluation should be undertaken truthfully in ensuring to get the message across to the right people. The project managers, donors, participants and citizens will be eager enough that reporting have been undertaken truthfully, so that any necessary adjustments can be done through the implementation progress. Undertaking the finest monitoring and evaluation course of action can be done, but if you cannot put in order a well-constructed, well-presented and convincing report then all the work will be nothing. It is vitally necessary to disseminate and communicate the results to key stakeholders and other audiences as soon as possible and in forms that are easy to understand and use. As stated in the United Nation Population Fund (2001; p95) The results should be distributed to those with a direct interest in the project, particularly individuals with duty for building important decision about the project and to other potentially concerned people. Adding on to the dissemination of final report, it is useful to organise conventions, workshops and conversation groups with various stakeholders, using a variety of methods such as visual displays and sounded presentations to communicate results and to help users assimilate and interpret information. For example the monitoring and evaluation staff can prepare information on the most important findings and describe what effect they will have on the project implementation, development and expansion. Monitoring and evaluation must provide usable information. It must enable project directors, for example, to guide and shape their projects towards the greatest effectiveness. The most significant features of an effective evaluation is that it does make available usable information , information that project staff and other stakeholders can make use of directly to make decisions about the project. To conclude, the usefulness of monitoring and evaluation to the project managers, donors, participants and the citizens will be reflected upon the honest, objective, fair, accurate data collection and the truthful undertaking of reporting of information relevant to project. The work of monitoring and evaluation should be honest to ensure honesty and integrity in having respect to the safekeeping, dignity and self-worth of respondents to surveys, the project participants, citizens and other stakeholders they interconnect with. It should also to be undertaken objectively in essence that it provides worthwhile responses to managers, donors, participants and the citizens as it informs decisions on operations or activities that are related to ongoing or future project intervention. Moreover, the work of monitoring and evaluation must be carried out fairly in its examination and recording of strengths and weakness of the project being monitored and evaluated, so that strengths can be built upon and problems addressed. Those involve in the monitoring and evaluation activities should make certain that the complete set of the findings along with relatable limitation are made accessible to the audience affected by the monitoring and evaluation, and any other expressed permissible privileges to receive the results. And so, the collection of data to be carried out accurately and that reporting should be undertaken truthfully. The aim should be to identify the minimum amount of new information needed to meet the monitoring and evaluation needs. For all intents and purposes, the considerations of cost, time, feasibility and useful means must need to be very carefully selective in what was collected.