In some proposals, you have to define indicators to measure your project progress and success. But what are indicators and how do you come up with them? In this article, we will give answers to all your questions.
Indicators are markers of your projects’ achievements in a specific area. They describe a value that you want to achieve and tell outsiders something about the success or progress of your project. They are especially important in the monitoring and evaluation of your project.
Indicators should be easily measurable. When you chose them, make sure that they are something that you can actually make a statement about. Sometimes it is close to impossible to obtain data in some areas, so do not choose an indicator here.
How to use indicators
To measure the performance of a project or program, you need to define a certain set of indicators. You will want to see change or progress throughout the lifespan of your project on these indicators. You need to define them before your project starts. Normally, indicators are grouped together for different topics and displayed in form of a table. If they have been used in a project application, they will be used for reporting purposes throughout the project lifespan.
In the following example the indicators are:
- Number of teachers trained
- Student attendance rates
- Access to hospitals
- Percentage of women giving birth in hospitals
As you can see in the example, the measurement of indicators gives your organization the possibility to track success and progress and thus makes it easy to identify bumps in the road and challenges. Even if you are not required by the donor to hand in progress reports, it makes a lot of sense to monitor the progress on the indicators for your own use.
If you are required to report about milestones and you underperform in some areas, you should always add detailed information about why and how this happened. This also gives you a chance to revise the setup of the project and point out at an early stage if there are any problems with it and if any adjustments have to be made.
Like with milestones, the danger of indicators can be that you only focus on them. Never forget to look at your project as a whole as well. While indicators are important, do not lose sight of the entirety of your work.
