1: Focus on a manageable number of important program-related decisions.

Guidelines 

Planning the M&E action


The purpose of evaluating  programs is to help those who must make decisions about the program do so in an appropriate manner. You will discover that evidence gathered in an evaluation study often plays only a minor role in the decisions ultimately made about a program. For many decision makers, a series of political and personal factors play a far more prominent role than any evidence of program effectiveness provided by an evaluator. As an evaluator, therefore, you will need to structure your evidence-gathering efforts to yield information that has at least a reasonable chance of affecting the decisions to be made.