Ways To Enhance Your Monitoring and Evaluation Career

Mark is a cost controller of a supply chain company here in Kenya. As a cost controller, he is responsible for controlling the project costs which involves planning, developing, controlling, and forecasting the project’s budget. Monitoring and evaluation have proved to be a critical aspect of his career.

“I need to improve in monitoring and evaluation skills because it will increase the efficiency of the planning process and implementation of measures. It will also help me optimize the use of resources and provide empirical evidence for future planning and appraisal of any measures, which is why these skills are important for me”, he added.

Before we go any further on Mark’s issue, let’s define what monitoring and evaluation are.

Monitoring is the systematic process of collecting, analyzing, and using the information to track a program’s progress toward reaching its objectives and to guide management decisions. Evaluation, on the other hand, focuses on expected and achieved accomplishments, examining the results chain (inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts), processes, contextual factors, and causality, in order to understand achievements or the lack of achievements.

We held a discussion with Mark on ways to enhance his monitoring and evaluation career which includes; 

1. Subscribe to online platforms that focus on M&E

Online platforms are a good source of knowledge on monitoring and evaluation expertise; browse for such sites and subscribe to them e.g., Open Data Kit

The advantage of using the internet to learn is that you have free access to a variety of information you can employ to grow your M&E expertise. Monitoring and evaluation websites are rich sources of useful documents in a wide variety of thematic areas.

2. Join an Evaluation Society or Association

In Mark’s case who is serious about improving his expertise, I recommended him to join a regional evaluation society for example Evaluation Society of Kenya (ESK) or the Monitoring and evaluation professionals’ Association of Kenya (MEPAK).

Not only does this give you credibility, but it is good for networking and for keeping abreast of the developments in your local context.

3. Set output indicators

Output indicators are specific pieces of information that you collect to keep track and report on the work you have delivered. Output indicators give you information about:

• What outputs do you deliver
• Who you delivered them to
• Whether the people or organizations you delivered them to were satisfied and thought your work was good quality.

Mark as a cost controller, the goal is to minimize the deviation from the budget and ensure that the project is completed within the approved budget.

4. Find a Mentor

I told Mark to identify a personality in the M&E field that he admires and would love to learn from. Once he identifies them use the networking skills to reach out to them. Mentors are beneficial as they have achieved what you hope to someday; they will teach you their ways so you can learn and even do better than they have.

Do you want to enhance your monitoring and evaluation knowledge?

If you do not, sign up for this Monitoring and evaluation training today.