As i work in the field of developing agencies. Its often i and colleagues had difficulties in our work to measure our achievement in a project activities. I want to share to you what i found in the mailing list how to define those measure into certain variable. It's written by Chris Whitehouse and you can reach him in his
website
In my personal opinion his illustration can be embedded to any kind of project management activities in general. Through his simple example you can acknowledge that a lot of our activities in daily life can be measure.
The snack project
Inputs: 1 teabag, 2 teaspoons sugar, 250 ml water, 2 eggs, 1 spoonful of butter, 4 spoonfuls of milk, 1 slice of bread, 1 chef who knows how to make tea and omelette, and a little gas, electricity, kerosene or fuel-wood.
Activities: wake up the chef (is that you, perhaps?), toast the bread; mix the eggs with the butter and half the milk, and cook and serve on the toast. Boil the water, pour in a mug, throw in the teabag, the remainder of the milk and the sugar, and then drink and eat.
Outputs: One mug of tea and one serving of scrambled egg on toast. (If you don't achieve this, your project has failed)
Outcome: Hunger alleviated (If you don't achieve this, you will be very disappointed, but maybe it's not all your fault... Perhaps what you really needed was a doctor!)
Impact: Happiness enhanced (This is your aim in the longer term. If you achieve it, that's great, but you can't really claim full credit for any increase in happiness. Nor can you be blamed if, through no fault of your own, the beneficiary's happiness has not increased as much as hoped for)
Remember your M&E, however: indicators, baselines and targets.
Output indicators:
1) number of cups of tea in front of you.
Baseline (1 p.m.): zero. Target (1.15 p.m.): one.
2) number of plates of scrambled egg on toast in front of you.
Baseline (1 p.m.): zero. Target (1.15 p.m.): one.
Outcome indicator:
1) your blood sugar level
Baseline (1 p.m.): below normal. Target (2 p.m.): normal.
2) Strength of hunger pangs (on a scale of 1 low to 10 high)
Baseline (1 p.m.): 8. Target (1.30 p.m.): 3.
Impact indicator:
1) Feeling of happiness (on a scale of 1 low to 10 high)
Baseline (1 p.m.): 2. Target (3 p.m.): 5.
Remember, too, that, depending you define your project, your snack (which is in effect the output in the above example) could be one of a number of inputs for a 'higher' project, e.g. a training programme. And so on. The output of the training programme (e.g. trained counsellors) could then be an input for an even higher programme (e.g. a disaster recovery programme).
Don't you just love it?
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more complicated situation in the field of project management activities.
Each set of stakeholders will have a number of interests, some of which may even be conflicting. And (something that we tend to forget) there will quite likely be differences of opinion amongst members within stakeholder groups.
OK, let me take this on a bit; again, it's off the top of my head, but how about looking at a more 'real' example. Let's organise a charity soccer match to be held between two well-known and popular teams, in aid of the victims of the victims of Japan's recent earthquake and tsunami. All the funds raised from ticket sales will go direct to Japan, as the overhead costs will all be borne by the sponsors, XXX Ltd.
Let's see how this project would be regarded (or indeed designed) by each of the following stakeholders. Anyone who wants to, please feel free to construct simple 'snack-project'-style listings of inputs/outputs/outcomes/impacts as they would be defined by each of the following stakeholder groups. Do a list for stakeholder group 1 (below), then group 2, and so on. In each case, I think we'll find that, while there will be many similarities at the input level, the inconsistencies get ever larger and larger at output, outcome and, most significantly, impact level.
Here are just some of the stakeholders and their interests:
1. The players will want to win (half of them must be disappointed, of course), and they want a good game that will leave their reputations intact, or even improved.
2. The referee wants a clean game, and to come out of it with his (or her?) reputation intact.
3. The organisers don't care who wins, as long as it is a good clean and enjoyable match. Their main interest is reap maximum returns from ticket and refreshment sales.
4. The press want a good story: doesn't matter too much whether it's a good game or not, but yeah, if there's a fight, or a gory injury, or a scandal about one of the players' personal relationship, so much the better.
5. Most of the ticket-holders want to get a good seat in the stadium, watch an exciting game, and want 'their' team to win.
6. The touts want to make maximum profit from the forged tickets they have printed, and are selling outside the entrance to the stadium (their clients won't get seats).
7. Some trouble-makers will want extra excitement; they may choose to pick fights amongst themselves up in the stands, or to throw things onto the field.
8. Pressure groups, who resent the idea of raising money for wealthy Japan, when thousands more die every day around the world from preventable diseases like malaria, are hoping that their 'stay-away' campaign will result be well covered by the media, and that attendance will be low.
9. The police want a peaceful game and/or to find and arrest hooligans already on their 'wanted' list.
10. The sponsors, XXX Ltd., want the game to be a trouble-free success, raising lots of money and, oh yes, getting good publicity for themselves in the process.
11. The organisers of a nearby dog-race event are upset about this event being held on the same afternoon as their event, and hope only that they will get good attendance and media coverage at their event.
12. And then, of course, there's Jerry, the worm that lives near the centre spot, hoping to survive the game unsquashed. :)
So how do you define the inputs/outputs/outcomes/impacts of this football match project? Indeed, should we even try??? Clearly, each stakeholder group will define them differently. This is the real world. The temptation in aid/development world has always been to dismiss these varying expectations as risks and assumptions, awarding them with little more than passing footnote observations in a project document or report. Plus, we like to ignore completely those 'stakeholders' who are explicitly excluded from project support, e.g. the rich in a community, the men in women's literacy programmes, the majority tribes in programmes supporting minorities. To my mind, it makes much more sense to construct a multi-dimensional model, a network that recognises the full range of interests and expectations: I know I've said it before, but the traditional pyramid-shaped model, where you have fixed and distinct sets of outputs, each set leading to its own outcome, and with a set of similarly formed outcomes all working towards a single objective ... doesn't work. It doesn't reflect real life. It doesn't even reflect reality in the development world. I would prefer to see multiple interlinked outputs, multiple interlinked outcomes, and multiple objectives, as they relate to all stakeholders.
The difficulty is that we have to tread a careful line, a compromise between the complex reality of what is happening 'out there', and what can be communicated to, and understood by, the donors. My fear is that donors won't be satisfied with illustrations of networks and pathways. Like nagging children, they will want to know 'So what?' and 'Why?'. And we have to be able to answer those questions in a way that not only they, but also we, can truly and fully understand. Some challenge.