2.1 An Overview of Using M&E to Manage Impact

Rural development projects aim to improve the lives of the rural poor. As manager of a project or part of it, do you always know what impact you are having and why? Learning about successes and failures through regular monitoring and critical reflection is fundamental for guiding your intervention towards achieving maximum impact. Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is the heart of "managing for impact" (see Box 2-1).

"Managing for impact" means you need to respond to changing circumstances and increased understanding by adapting the project so that it will be more likely to achieve its intended impacts. Such adaptation may entail small changes to activities or larger strategic revisions. Each project is being managed for impact under its own set of constraints. Keeping updated on the internal and external constraints will help you have realistic expectations of what can be adjusted and achieved.

To manage adaptively, project implementers and managers need to:

Managing for impact is only possible if you have reliable information about the progress of activities and their outcomes, the reasons for success and failure, and the context in which activities are taking place. This information is the output of your M&E procedures. Analysing this information with key stakeholders can support good decisions that improve the project. Only when information helps the project reduce poverty more effectively will an M&E system be worthwhile. Taking poverty seriously has implications for M&E, as RDRS (Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Service) in Bangladesh is aware. With the need to recruit more selectively from severely impoverished groups, it is moving to monitor individual households rather than credit groups. This will allow the organisation to improve its social accountability but also its services to the poor of northern Bangladesh.

Box 2-1. Defining monitoring and evaluation Evaluation, in its broadest sense, simply means "to assess or judge the value or worth of something". In practice, this means that implementers need a questioning attitude for continual assessment. Evaluation events are often more periodic, and ask more fundamental questions about the overall progress and direction of a project. Self-evaluation processes combine well with external evaluations. Monitoring helps continual self-evaluation by providing data to generate insights through formal and informal processes. Formal monitoring involves gathering data about chosen indicators and performance questions. Informal monitoring is about valuing and sharing impressions from chats with stakeholders and from observations in the field. Monitoring focuses on regular information-gathering and the frequent checking of short-term progress, with analysis about implications for the project. There is no consensus about terminology in planning and M&E. This Guide does not make an absolute distinction between "monitoring" and "evaluation" because, in practice, the two processes overlap and are part of a systematic participatory learning process. For example, if regular monitoring reveals that things are not going as expected, you might find it necessary to undertake a more thorough, thematic evaluation to understand why and know what changes can be made.

2.1.1 The Four Elements of Managing for Impact

To know if you are managing for impact, check Figure 2-1 to see if you and other implementing partners are putting in place the four basic elements that will give you the information and insights you need.

1. Guiding the Project Strategy for Poverty Impact - understanding the goals and objectives of the project and then allocating the available resources and guiding relationships between stakeholders to maximise impacts.

2. Creating a Learning Environment - inspiring and helping those involved with the project to reflect critically on progress, to learn from mistakes and to generate ideas for making improvements.

3. Ensuring Effective Operations - planning, organising and checking staff inputs, equipment, partner contracts, financial resources, (bi-) annual work plans, and communications to implement activities effectively and efficiently.

4. Developing and Using the M&E System - designing and implementing information gathering and reflective learning processes to generate insights that help you to improve operations and strategic directions.

Figure 2-1. Key elements in managing for impact

Table 2-1 illustrates how an organisation may or may not put these four ideas into practice. It can be used as a checklist by project managers to assess how well the project is doing in terms of managing for impact.

Table 2-1. Example of projects that do and that do not manage for impact

Elements	Project That Manages for Impact	Project That Does Not Manage for Impact
A focus on poverty	The implementing partners, including primary stakeholders, collect data on impact and meet regularly to consider if impacts can be seen and whether they meet expectations	The project leaves impact assessment to outside organisations and only focuses on monitoring the implementation of activities.
A learning environment	Project and partner staff and primary stakeholders regularly and openly discuss progress and problems. Problems and mistakes are the basis for learning how to work better. People feel safe enough to share their ideas and observations with higher authorities and peers.	Staff focus only on implementing activities, without asking if they are relevant to local poverty needs. Project/Partner organisation staff feel that their ideas and observations are not valued and do not speak up when they see things going wrong. Primary stakeholders are rarely asked their opinions.
Effective operations	Clear systems exist for tracking staff performance, equipment use, etc. People are clear about their responsibilities and deadlines, and the resources they need to do their work are available. The managers allocate sufficient budget and are building capacity where needed.	People are often unclear about what they should be doing, when and where. Vehicles and other resources are poorly coordinated and often not available on time. Much time is wasted in inactivity. No efforts are made to fill capacity gaps.
A supportive M&E system	The project manager has quick and easy access to information about project progress. Staff and partners generate information about outcomes and impact achievements. Information about project progress is shared regularly with all stakeholders in a visually appropriate way. The walls of the project office show up-to-date information, graphs, time charts and pictures about project progress. Studies are undertaken to explain any emerging problems. Project reports make interesting reading, and tell both the good and bad and how improvements will be made.	The project manager has quick and easy access to information about project progress. Staff and partners generate information about outcomes and impact achievements. Information about project progress is shared regularly with all stakeholders in a visually appropriate way. The walls of the project office show up-to-date information, graphs, time charts and pictures about project progress. Studies are undertaken to explain any emerging problems. Project reports make interesting reading, and tell both the good and bad and how improvements will be made. Few people know what the project has achieved to date. There is little evidence about whether all the activities of the project are leading anywhere. M&E is seen largely as an external reporting function. Project reports are uninteresting, are not analytical, and exaggerate successes while not mentioning problems. Little information is shared with project stakeholders.

2.1.2 Guiding the Strategy for Poverty Impact

A typical IFAD-supported project has about seven years during which to have an impact on poverty. At start-up, the project strategy is first revised. This is a critical opportunity for strategic guidance. After this, the project's energy tends to focus on putting capacities and procedures in place; while towards the end, efforts often focus on consolidating impact and phasing out the project presence. This leaves the project stakeholders with three or four years of prime time to take corrective action.

To know how best to mobilise project resources and partnerships for reducing poverty, the implementers need to understand the project strategy and redirect it when problems arise. Guiding the strategy is largely about asking the right questions - and getting answers - at the right moments (see Box 2-2). M&E processes are critical for making collaborative decisions about adjusting the project's direction.

Box 2-2. Five strategic M&E questions to manage for impact Relevance - Is what we are doing now a good idea in terms of improving the situation at hand? Is it dealing with the priorities of the target groups? Why or why not? Effectiveness - Have the plans (purposes, outputs and activities) been achieved? Is the intervention logic correct? Why or why not? Is what we are doing now the best way to maximise impact? Efficiency - Are resources used in the best possible way? Why or why not? What could we do differently to improve implementation, thereby maximising impact, at an acceptable and sustainable cost? Impact - To what extent has the project contributed towards poverty reduction (or other long-term goals)? Why or why not? What unanticipated positive or negative consequences did the project have? Why did they arise? Sustainability - Will there be continued positive impacts as a result of the project after the project funds run out in four or five years? Why or why not?

Every project has an overall logic (see Figure 2-2 and Box 2-3) that describes what is to be achieved, why and how. The project logic starts by describing the situation that a group of stakeholders wishes to improve. The vision about how this situation can be changed should be based on the problems and aspirations of stakeholders, and particularly of the rural poor. This vision justifies the project's existence. Inevitably there will be different perceptions of the key problems and what constitutes an improvement. This is why participatory approaches to planning are so important (see Sections 2.7 and 3.2 for more details on participatory planning).

Figure 2-2. The project strategy and its local context

Box 2-3. From activities - via outcomes - to impacts Impacts are changes in the lives of the rural poor or, more specifically, improvements in their wellbeing. To reduce poverty, a project team plans concrete activities. But these do not lead directly to impacts. There are many steps en route and many other players involved who influence final impact, so activities need continual steering. Most planning approaches put two steps between activities and impacts: outputs and outcomes. Outputs are the direct products or services delivered by the project. The outcomes are what happen after outputs are delivered. They are the first signs of impact. Outcomes usually involve behavioural change in people or organisations as a result of the project. For IFAD-supported projects, impacts are both the outcomes and what happens with the rural poor after the outcomes have taken place. For example, a project output might be "research into and development of an improved farming system" in the project area. The outcome for this is "adoption of the improved farming system by intended primary stakeholders". Then the impact will be that this adoption has improved the financial and food security situation of those who have made the change.

After making sure you have a clear "objective hierarchy" and the project is underway, guiding the project strategy for poverty impact becomes a matter of steering - continually checking, questioning and correcting. Proof that you have been guiding the project strategy well is when, from year to year, all stakeholders can see an improvement in how activities are implemented, in relationships between stakeholders and in the quality of project outputs.

Focusing only on poverty reduction is a long-term goal. So it is not very useful for everyday guidance. Reflections on the project's direction in, for example, monthly or quarterly meetings will focus on activities, outputs and processes, but will also require adjusting assumptions that underpin the project. Each year, a close look at the overall poverty reduction goal is needed to manage for impact. This is when impact monitoring plays a central role.

2.1.3 Encouraging Learning through Critical Reflection and Participation

It is the people involved in a development intervention who will make it succeed or fail. Their participation in learning how to improve a project throughout its existence is fundamental. For project and partner staff, this means listening carefully and regularly to the views of different groups - including each other - about what is working and what is not, and hearing reasons for why problems exist and what needs to improve. Learning certainly requires more than only "listening". Opportunities need to be created for staff from the project and implementing partners and primary stakeholders to meet and analyse their experiences with the project. Section 8 offers ideas to encourage reflection and critical analysis.

A good M&E system provides and communicates data to help stakeholder groups analyse progress. M&E is nothing more - or less - than an open and critically reflective communication process to strengthen project partnership. Putting participatory learning at the centre of good project management requires both data on project activities and personal accounts of people's experiences. It requires regular reviews by project staff with primary stakeholders, supported by occasional inputs from outside specialists.

In many development interventions, people lose motivation if they are either not invited to participate or the conditions are not created for their meaningful participation. Participation in M&E is meant to provide opportunities for people with relevant views about the project to learn how to improve it.

Behind this simple statement lie two questions. First, who has a relevant view? As it is neither practicable nor necessary to include everyone in developing the M&E system, choices need to be made. Second, how can different people best be involved? Different stakeholders' involvement in key M&E tasks needs to be negotiated. Do they want to participate, and under what conditions, in:

A participatory learning approach to M&E needs to be supported by a participatory style of management. If you are going to involve many stakeholders successfully in M&E, then they need to feel that the managers encourage and reward critical reflection. Only then will everyone be able to learn from problems in order to make the project work better. If management has a primarily controlling and punishing function, then those involved will not want to risk innovation. This will greatly limit a project's ability to manage for impact.

2.1.4 Ensuring Effective Operations

Ensuring effective operations requires putting in place the practical and operational conditions for carrying out project activities efficiently. Operations are guided by the annual work plan and budget (AWPB) and by regular meetings with implementers and primary stakeholders.
A project needs detailed annual and half-yearly work plans and budgets for six areas:

1. Staffing: numbers, salaries, capacities, quality of performance;
2. Equipment, goods, office buildings: amounts and qualities of which materials per location, plus processes in place and resources allocated for maintenance;
3. Managing contracts: tracking and guiding the quality of subcontracted parts of implementation, including contracts with communities about their rights and responsibilities;
4. Finances: tracking expenditure in order to (re-) allocate resources as necessary, as well as producing financial audits required by law;
5. Work planning: producing and monitoring the monthly, half-yearly and annual work plans for individual staff members, implementing teams and the project as a whole;
6. Communications: production and dissemination schedule and responsibilities for all communiqués, presentations and publications for shared decision-making and accountability.

2.1.5 Steps in Developing the M&E System

Figure 2-1 shows that managing for impact is based on the M&E system. Developing an M&E system involves six steps (see Section 2.5):

1. establishing the purpose and scope;
2. identifying performance questions, information needs and indicators;
3. planning for information gathering and organising;
4. planning critical reflection processes and events;
5. planning for quality communication and reporting;
6. planning for the necessary conditions and capacities.

Each of these design steps needs to be dealt with twice. First, as part of the appraisal report, in which the design team describes a general M&E framework for each of these six elements. Second, during project start-up, the project staff need to transform the general M&E framework into a detailed operational M&E plan. The six steps are discussed in detail in Sections 4 to 8.

The outputs of the project M&E system will provide answers to the five questions that guide the project strategy. Looking at the questions in Box 2-2, operational management is more frequent and must focus on the questions of "effectiveness" and "efficiency". More strategic reflections, for example during annual reviews and supervision missions, will look at the questions of "relevance", "impact" and "sustainability".

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2.2 Management and M&E

2.2.1 Key Opportunities to Manage for Impact

The four elements of managing for impact are the broad processes that need to happen in any project. But on a daily basis, project and partner staff and primary stakeholders carry out more specific management functions, each of which presents an opportunity to refocus on impacts.

The idea of managing for impact can be implemented quite simply in regular events, such as annual project reviews, quarterly and mid-year partner/staff meetings, and during supervision missions. These ideas are easy for existing projects to implement as part of their current processes and for new projects to plan into their operating procedures.

For example, projects increasingly hold annual reviews with primary stakeholders as part of their ongoing self-evaluation process. During such a review, staff, partners and local people will discuss the monitoring data on activities, outputs and outcomes. They will analyse them with respect to project goals to see how activities are - or are not - contributing to poverty reduction. They will also discuss the quality of the project implementation process and of relationships amongst stakeholders. This leads to formulating the next annual work plan and budget (AWPB) and adjusting M&E plans. This self-assessment and development of the AWPB form the basis of the annual progress report, but more strategic issues can also emerge from community-level discussions (see Box 2-4). So an annual review process links all four elements of managing for impact: impact, strategy, operations and M&E.

Box 2-4. Changing strategic direction in the Northwest Agricultural Services Project, Armenia In the initial project design, a community development component was included with the intention of funding community activities and infrastructure. However, once the project began and discussions were held with communities, the project team realised that a more sustainable approach to the project would be to use this funding to stimulate small-scale community enterprise development. If these enterprises turned out to be successful, then the community would be able to afford to invest in their own infrastructure needs, such as water supply and schools. The project team felt that this approach of building greater economic self-reliance would have a more lasting impact. With the agreement of the primary stakeholders, project staff, government and IFAD, the project strategy was changed to make this possible. Now the project needs to check that their assumption that people will invest in their own infrastructure needs is, indeed, a correct one. If this is not happening, then they might need to rethink the project strategy again.

Quarterly and mid-year review and planning meetings could operate similarly to a participatory annual review, perhaps with fewer stakeholders and more discussion on the quality of implementation and relationships. Using monitoring data in discussions can challenge people's impressions and the assumptions and so trigger analysis of what is really happening. Quarterly and mid-year reports could then focus on the achievement of activities, analysis of key achievements and problems, and - most importantly - on agreeing how to improve implementation. Such regular and improvement-oriented self-assessments are proof of a healthy learning environment that focuses on achieving impact by organising and implementing operations effectively.

Supervision missions and mid-term reviews are also occasions when all four aspects of managing for impact come together. But a project cannot rely on these alone, as MTRs come too late in a project's life (see Box 2-5) and supervision missions are not always in enough depth or timed appropriately to influence impact achievement. When project implementers take responsibility for their own learning process, they can then take corrective action when it is needed and not when it is too late. Such action involves redressing mistakes, expanding good practices, responding to changes in the context by rethinking activities and processes, and taking up new opportunities.

Box 2-5. Managing for impact - don't wait for the mid-term review! Many IFAD-supported projects only start paying attention to M&E at the mid-term review stage. Such a late start with M&E is obviously not desirable. For example, according to the 1997 supervision mission report of one project, monitoring at the government level was not very effective, with the qualitative impacts not being monitored. According to the loan agreement, the government should have established institutional arrangements to monitor and evaluate progress with project impact on primary stakeholders. However, although the project was initiated in 1995, these arrangements were only established by September 1997. Until that time, there was an apparent absence of a proper M&E system in the supervision reports and the memoranda on the project. The only source of impact evaluation was the mid-term status review undertaken by a local research centre.

2.2.2 Knowing Your Information Needs and Planning Learning Opportunities

Clarity about your information needs helps in structuring the M&E system and, in particular, knowing how to make the most of events such as half-yearly revisions, MTRs and annual participatory reviews. To check if your M&E system is providing the information you need, refer to the five questions in Box 2-2. If part of the picture is missing for you, then you need to adjust existing M&E processes.

Not only managers have information needs. Everyone involved in the project has specific tasks in the project and therefore specific information needs. A project M&E system must consider as many needs as possible. Only then will managing for impact become a participatory learning process. Section 5 discusses some ways to deal with different information needs. For this reason, all projects must have a range of learning events. For instance, the Tropisec project in Nicaragua seeks inputs from 16 different events and information sources (see Section 2.7.2).

To use information most effectively for managing for impact, think about the key moments during the project life when strategic decisions are made that enable you to move closer to a poverty reduction impact (see Figure 2-3). Information from M&E will be most useful if it feeds into these moments.

Thinking about these key moments as learning opportunities to manage for impact can reveal their value as strategic steering exercises, rather than as obligatory. Keep the level of discussion and type of decision appropriate to the event. For example, an annual review process is usually not the best moment to discuss how to organise the delivery of stationery supplies to village groups. Nor is a weekly staff meeting the appropriate place to agree on the new terms of contracts with partners.

Figure 2-3. The sequence of learning opportunities during the project cycle

2.2.3 Recognising and Tracking Operating Constraints in the Project Context

Understanding context is critical when it comes to assessing relevance of strategy and activities, anticipating operational problems and judging a project's contribution, and also when designing the M&E aspects of a project.

You can start to disentangle the project's contribution by analysing the evolution of project interventions alongside other concurrent external influences that affect primary stakeholders. Continual updating on context also allows you to adapt the project strategy and operations while en route. A systematic and regular assessment of operating conditions helps with anticipating some of the operational issues that could arise. For example, in Nepal, one project manager receives quarterly "political situation monitoring" reports to understand how the project may be affected. These reports include a brief description of that period's critical events - such as safety and insecurity, government actions, demonstrations and dialogues - and their implications. The information is collected via key informants, newspapers, radio and television. It is essential for deciding whether or not to suspend activities in an insecure area.

Because contexts vary across projects and during the lifetime of a project, constraints and coping strategies will also vary (see Box 2-6). It is important to adjust project strategy and implementation to the extent that circumstances allow. The first element of managing for impact - guiding the project strategy (see Section 2.3) - may be particularly helpful for dealing with changing contexts. Section 3, on adapting the initial project design, also provides useful ideas.

Box 2-6. Enabling and constraining contexts Guatemala: At project start-up, political and socio-economic changes had led to a resizing of the state and to decentralisation of its functions. The project responded with a new strategy. It involved local actors (especially grassroots organisations) in a continual process of planning and evaluation, which facilitated the gradual decentralisation of project services. So an operating "constraint" was turned into an advantage and led to more participatory forms of monitoring and self-evaluation. Ghana: In 1996, clients complained that they would only rarely see the intermediaries - the banks that provide credit. After this complaint, the project created a "cycle of training" so that there would be constant follow-up and counselling. This created a new challenge - ensuring sufficient staff at the banks. Although they stipulated three staff members per bank to follow up with the clients, in practice there was often only one because of the government's no-hire policy.

Those involved in designing a project also need to understand contextual issues. Design teams may unknowingly specify certain modes of operations and organisational relationships that cause significant problems for negotiating and implementing good M&E (see Section 4 for more details on designing M&E). Tables 2-2 to 2-4 list project and context features that affect project management and M&E. As a project manager or the person responsible for M&E, you might wish to keep these in mind when deciding what direction to take in developing an M&E system.

Table 2-2. Project features with methodological implications

	How many implementing partners are anticipated?		The more there are, the more time is needed to build capacity and negotiate for an M&E system that meets all information needs and is genuinely shared.
	What aspects of the local culture and government system may help or constrain participatory processes?		The existing local and organisational cultures may help or hinder more participatory M&E efforts.
	Who is the cooperating institution - and what does it say about or require from M&E?		Make sure that its and IFAD's understanding of M&E procedures and requirements do not contradict each other. Ask both to clarify what they want/need.
	How long is the timeframe for the project?		The longer, the more time you have for developing effective M&E with all stakeholders but also the greater the pressure to produce far-reaching impacts and the greater the need to adjust the project en route in reaction to changing contexts.
	How much of the project design is fixed?		Knowing the boundaries for adapting the project enables you to focus your critical-reflections effort on those areas where strategic change is possible.
	Have learning opportunities been designed into the project?		The less this is the case, the more effort is needed to put in place incentives to use M&E as a genuine learning tool to adjust the project strategy and operations

Table 2-3. Project features with communication implications

	How large and decentralised are project operations?		The larger and more decentralised, the more decentralised analysis of M&E data can be and also the more attention needs to be paid to setting up communications flows so that the managers stay informed of what is happening locally.
	How decentralised is the government in the project area?		If more decentralised, then theoretically there is more potential for stakeholder involvement in project M&E, with more options for downward accountability as a form of beneficiary-oriented transparency.
	How hierarchical is the governance tradition in the project country/area?		The form of governance may require or prohibit the involvement of various levels of bureaucracy in M&E and may bring with it more or less bureaucracy.
	How receptive are the local cultures to sharing problems and learning from mistakes?		Cultural-historical contexts will determine the extent to which certain types of information can be criticised and to which people learn from error and share problems.
	How many funding agencies and partners does project management have to report to - and what do they need?		The greater the diversity and number of funding agencies and implementing partners, the more care is needed to keep different reporting/accountability demands manageable.

Table 2-4. Project features with implications for the quality of information

	Is the project in an area of civil unrest?		In areas of conflict, the "start-stop" nature of projects will compromise continuity of implementation and thus of progress assessment, besides making the attribution of impact more difficult due to the large impact of external factors.
	What kind of operational style does the project have?		Different types of projects (more or less decentralised or open-ended) will need to consider different types of indicators to assess the quality of the processes.
	How decentralised and "good-governance" driven is the government in the project area?		The less transparency in a government sector, the more difficult it is to unearth and use highly critical data that emerge from the M&E system.
	What type of development goals does the project strive to achieve?		Depending on the project focus, the impact on poverty alleviation will be more or less direct and will therefore affect how to undertake impact assessment and demonstrate attribution clearly.
	Does the project focus on physical changes or on human capacities - or both?		More quantitative and physical change-oriented project goals versus capacity development and empowerment-focused goals will make other demands on assessing long-term impact in terms of improved lives.
	How expansive is the project?		The larger the geographic coverage of the project, the more conscious effort needs to be made to understand local people's views and to assess above the activity level.

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2.3 Guiding the Project Strategy for Poverty Impact

2.3.1 About the Project Strategy

Let's turn now to the first of the four elements of managing for impact in more detail - the project strategy and how to guide it.

The main output of the formulation phase is a draft strategy for the project. The strategy consists of an objective hierarchy and a description of the necessary implementation arrangements and resources needed. The strategy is the basis for the project appraisal report. For IFAD-supported projects, the project strategy is based on the logical framework approach (LFA) and project objectives are summarised as a hierarchy in a logframe matrix (see Section 3). But irrespective of how the project strategy and objectives are formulated, the ideas in this section remain relevant.

By necessity, any project strategy simplifies reality. It cannot possibly describe all details of a context and of the intended plan. This means that the documented strategy is a management tool that requires continual adjusting to reflect current contexts and changing needs.
It is fundamental that the project strategy be made as clear as possible at the onset for - and with - all those involved. In one IFAD-supported project, the staff did not have a clear understanding of what the project was about. The initial project design was poorly formulated and had been based on very limited stakeholder consultation. Since the document was so unclear, people were not motivated to investigate and respond to the problems they encountered. Staff were passively implementing whatever the document said, so were driven by activities rather than impact.

2.3.2 The Objective Hierarchy and Assumptions

The objective hierarchy is the spine of the project strategy (see Figure 2-4 and Box 2-7). The hierarchy describes how lower-level activities contribute to higher-level objectives, and how these, in turn, help achieve the overall project purpose(s) and goal.

Figure 2-4 shows an objective hierarchy with four levels and assumptions between all levels. Development organisations use many different names for the levels in the objective hierarchy and even different numbers of levels (see Section 3). But all levels can be considered objectives, as they are something that the project stakeholders want to achieve. This is why the term, objective hierarchy, is used (although the terms, intervention logic and narrative summary, are also used). The hierarchy is the first column of the logframe matrix and shows how the "means" lead to the "ends" of an intervention.

Figure 2-4. A project's objective hierarchy

Box 2-7. Definitions for four levels of an objective hierarchy Goal: The long-term objective, change of state or improved situation to which a development intervention, such as a project or project component, is intended to contribute. For IFAD-supported projects, the goal is some form of poverty reduction. The extent to which the project contributes towards the goal is the impact of the project. Purpose: The overall objective of the project (or project component), in terms of overall observable changes in performance, behaviour or status of resources that the project (or project component) is responsible for achieving. Standard logframes use one project purpose while IFAD recognises that a complex project may have several purposes. Outputs: The products, services or results that must be delivered by the project implementers for the project purpose(s) or project component purposes to be achieved. Activities: The actions taken by project implementers, which are required to deliver the outputs by using inputs such as funds, technical assistance and other types of resources.

Getting the logic of the hierarchy clear with the implementing partners, including primary stakeholders, is essential - although this does not necessarily mean using the logframe terminology with them. Simply ensure that there is consensus about what is to be implemented in the short-, mid- and long-term and for what overall purpose and goal. If a hierarchy is not logical, then you may end up implementing many different fragmented activities that do not lead to a clear output. Poor logic can most certainly lead to project failure (see Box 2-8). Or you may be promising to deliver an impact for the rural poor that is totally impossible given your timeframe and budget. Finally, if you are not clear about what you intend to achieve by when, then you will find it very difficult to know precisely what you should be monitoring and evaluating.