Five lessons from a year of monitoring and evaluation clinics

Over the past year we have run a series of short, practical monitoring and evaluation clinics for practitioners in Kampala. The same five problems surfaced repeatedly, and almost none of them were about indicators.

1. Too much is measured

Frameworks routinely carry forty or fifty indicators. Teams collect all of them and use six. The rest consume field time and erode trust in the whole exercise.

2. Data arrives after the decision

Quarterly reporting cycles cannot inform monthly management decisions. Where the two are misaligned, evidence becomes an accountability ritual rather than a management tool.

3. Nobody owns the analysis

Collection is assigned. Analysis is assumed. The result is clean data nobody has interpreted.

4. Baselines are set too late

A baseline gathered six months into implementation measures early results, not the starting point.

5. Learning has no meeting

If there is no standing forum where findings change plans, learning depends entirely on individual initiative.

Each of these is fixable without new software or a larger budget. Most are fixed by measuring less and using it sooner.