Monitoring and evaluation

Within the aided development sector, the logical framework is the most commonly used tool for planning, as well as monitoring and evaluation (M&E). Although the methodology of a logical framework has its merits, it is often not well applied and mainly used as a checklist for the purpose of accountability. Monitoring is reduced to checking whether activities have been completed as planned. The logical framework (in practice not in theory) does not encourage stakeholders to critically reflect from time to time on the quality of the previous steps or the validity of analytical insights and assumptions at the beginning of every project. This however may not be so much a problem of the “logframe” method as such but the way it is linked to contractual agreements between donor and recipient. The bureaucratic implications of proposing a change in a logical framework are often discouraging. As a result practitioners are not stimulated to learn and to develop an eye for the unpredictable dynamics in a complex environment that makes the road to planned outcomes (and even the planned outcomes themselves) very uncertain. Therefore the logical framework is seen to induce linear thinking.

The resources on page all explore ways to overcome the limitations associated with the logical framework approach to ensure that M&E processes serve to facilitate learning and innovation.