Using Progress Markers with the logic model to build a toolbox for project monitoring.
Author: Kaia Ambrose
Published: Thursday 14 August 2014
After developing 4 maternal health projects with the logframe, and a corresponding Performance Measurement Framework, program managers felt they were going to be data-poor on outcomes. Most of the outcomes were linked with indicators that are more realistically measured at baseline and endline i.e. increase in exclusive breastfeeding. However, the logic model didn’t give the program managers or the project staff an idea of how different actors were contributing to exclusive breastfeeding, or the journey a mother takes to get to exclusive breastfeeding and the support and challenges she faces along the way; when they set up their monitoring systems, they were exclusively focused on output data (how many participants at a training workshop, how many seeds distributed, how many mother-to-mother groups set up), which are useful for giving a dashboard of project activities, but not useful for telling how improved nutrition practices are happening, and why or why not they are happening, and thus, how does project delivery need to improve / adapt in order to account for opportunities and barriers. Enter Outcome Mapping, and especially the concepts of Boundary Partners and Progress Markers.
Step 1: The project team did an actor analysis, narrowing that down to identified Boundary Partners that they would track because they determined they had a role to play in exclusive breastfeeding (among other maternal and child nutrition pieces of the puzzle). So for example, under the logic model outcome “improved nutritional practices among vulnerable women and men in target districts in Malawi”, whose indicators relate to WHO standards of infant and child nutrition. What the project needs to know though are the ways in which different actors have a role to play in nutrition, and the opportunities and barriers they create in regards to child nutrition, and the pathways they could be taking to support nutrition.
Step 2: After Boundary Partners were identified, Progress Marker sets were developed for each Boundary Partner. While this was an important exercise to further unpack and understand the project, and even touch on the project’s theory of change, the more important exercise was using the progress markers to set up monitoring tools. There were three tools developed:
Challenges:
Lessons:
This nugget was applied in: CARE Canada Maternal, Newborn and Child Health programming in Malawi, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.
Related Practitioner Guide sections: