Topic 4: Evaluating Your Impact

SDCE_clowdThis section highlights the importance of evaluation and why it is done within project management. Learners will be able to understand how to evaluate a project as well as recognise the benefits to doing so.

 

SDCE4-4What is evaluation, and why evaluate a project’s impact?

Evaluation is a structured process by which a project’s activities are assessed and understood.

Evaluation is a continuous tracking, analysing and interpretation of data related to the project in order to identify achievements.

Evaluation can also highlight weaknesses allowing to adjust and improve aspects of the project as it progresses.

 

Evaluation can establish the following:

  • Learn from previous experiences- what went right, what could be done better in the future?
  • Check progress- is the project making progress, are we establishing the goals of what we set out to achieve?
  • Establish a plan for the future, with a clear timeline.
  • Help display progress to funders and key stakeholders.

 

How to evaluate the impact and success of your project?

  • There are many ways to evaluate your SDCE project. One way is to visualise the future, sometime after the project has completed.
  • Imagine what did the project do well on. Did it achieve what the team set out to achieve? Think about what might have gone wrong, and how you could have fixed it.

When we think about what the project achieved, these are called Impacts. Impacts can be seen as what changes and differences occurred due to the project’s creation.

The impacts can measure four different aspects of a SDCE project:

  • The project members
  • The establishment behind the project
  • The beneficiaries of the project
  • The systems and procedures in place behind the project.

When we want to evaluate the impact of our projects, we identify data sources.

These are the sources of information that we can use to help identify the success of our project’s impacts. Data sources can include questionnaires, surveys, interviews, focus groups and observation. It is important to gather feedback at various stages of the project, as it can help to ensure that any issues or risks are dealt with, and to ensure the success of the project.

When we have gathered the data, and identified the impacts, it is now time to assess and act on the information we have found. This is a time where we evaluate the successes of the project so far, and the goals that have been established. Is the project on track? Have the objectives been met? What could be done differently or more efficiently? At this stage it is important to assess all information well, to ensure the project’s success in the future.

 

Quick Test

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. The author is solely responsible for this publication (communication) and the Commission accepts no responsibility for any use may be made of the information contained therein.