Project Management, Monitoring and Evaluation with MS Project Course

INTRODUCTION

There is increasing demand from multilateral agencies, funding bodies as well as boards of private companies for a strong demonstration that projects are being monitored and evaluated effectively.

Effective project monitoring allows a project team to make appropriate decisions on a day-to-day basis and ensures that projects are carried out as planned and modified when necessary.

Successful programs and projects begin from a pre-planned series of activities and events. However, things rarely work out exactly as planned. Managers must therefore periodically monitor selected indicators and measure performance during implementation so they can make timely adjustments where necessary, as well as subsequently determine the extent to which the program or project achieved its objectives.

DURATION

5 days

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• To introduce the project cycle and identify the issues necessary for planning
• To use Microsoft Project Software for Project Planning and Monitoring
• To prepare evaluation designs and how to document change
• To produce and share reports with stakeholders
• Understand the concept of effective project monitoring and evaluation
• Understand strategies and techniques for monitoring and evaluating projects
• Prepare monitoring and evaluation systems & plans
• Implement the monitoring and evaluation systems & plans

TOPICS TO BE COVERED

Day 1

Project Management Framework / Project Management Overview

• What’s Project Management?

• What’s a Project?

• Operations/Programs/Portfolios/Subprojects

• The Project Management Office

• Progressive Elaboration vs Scope Creep

• The Triple Constraint

• Ten Knowledge Areas

• Environmental & Organizational Influences

• Project Stakeholders

• Project Life Cycle & Phases

Project Management Processes

• Initiating Processes

• Planning Processes

• Executing Processing

• Monitoring & Controlling Processes

• Closing Processes

• Change, Deliverable & Information Flow

• Project Success Factors

Introduction to monitoring & evaluation

• An Overview of Monitoring, Control, and Evaluation

• Key Concepts of Monitoring and Evaluation

• Planning for M&E in a project implementation

The concept of effective Project M&E & Results-Based Management (RBM)

• Framework for effective M&E

• Setting up an M&E system

• steps involved in designing an effective M&E system

• Understanding Results-Based Management (RBM)

• Why use RBM?

Day 2

Setting project objectives & targets that facilitate effective M&E

• The Essentials of Defining Your Project

• SMART goals

• Priority setting

• Considering resources and common goods

• Participatory indicator selection and target setting

Project cycle and project planning 

• Understanding the difficulties inherent in project management

• Defining project parameters

Organizing the project’s human resources

• Identifying who is needed for the project

• Enumerating what is at stake to leverage shared points of interest

• Negotiating for and scheduling the necessary resources

Day 3

The logical framework as a project design/M&E tool

• Historical origin

• Components of the Log Frame

• The logical framework is the Basic tool for the Design of Monitoring and Evaluation systems

Tools, methods, and approaches for facilitating M&E

• Building monitoring and evaluation teams with defined roles and strong capabilities

• Baseline surveys and role in benchmarking

• Setting Project Milestones

• Performance Indicators

• Quantitative Indicators

• Qualitative Indicators

Tools, methods, and approaches for facilitating M&E

• Tools for  Data collection, processing, analysis

• Demonstrating leadership &communicating effectively to motivate those involved

• Tracking the project’s progress and identifying departures from initial goals

• Promoting the cooperation of project participants

• Group assignment

• Participants break into groups to work on group assignment

• Group presenters present findings

Results-based & participatory M&E

• Why participatory community monitoring and evaluation?

• Aim of participatory monitoring and evaluation (PME)

• Steps in participatory monitoring and evaluation (PME)

Day 4

Use of MS Project as a project management and monitoring tool

• Overview of MS Project

• Role of MS Project in planning

• Working with MS Project

Day 5

Evaluations, learning, and improvement

• Understanding project Implementation

• Assessing project evaluability

• Evaluation types & designs

• Quantitative evaluations

• Qualitative evaluations

Communicating and Reporting M&E finding

• Audience analysis

• Identifying reporting needs

• Type of reports

• Writing Monitoring and Evaluation reports

• Dissemination of Monitoring and Evaluation results

Practical group exercises

• Choose a project of preference, design for implementation, fit monitoring & evaluation plan, & any other tasks.

• Groups Present Final Results

• Demonstrate how Monitoring & Evaluation will be conducted in their chosen project