Project Evaluation Benefits: 7 Tips for Making an Evaluation Plan

A project evaluation is a formative aspect of the project management process, wherein an organization gathers data to measure whether or not it achieved its goals and why.

You can measure the impact of the project you’re working on in various ways, some of which are more internal while others are more outward-facing. For instance, you might evaluate how efficiently a team can complete a project by quantifying the amount of time it takes each member to go from assignment to completion on any of their tasks. Similarly, you could survey a target population or focus group with a questionnaire to see whether or not your new brand strategy is working in the real world.

Measuring the success of project outcomes sets you up for success in a litany of ways. Here are just three benefits a project evaluation can provide:

• An indication of areas for improvement: As you track project progress, it starts to become apparent where the areas of success and pain points are in your current strategy. When you make your final impact evaluation, you can accurately assess what your team should keep doing and what they need to change for the better on the next project.
• Measurable parameters: A project or program evaluation plan gives you and your team something definable to work toward. Rather than targeting something nebulous, you’re able to keep certain parameters in mind to see how well you’re meeting small goals along the way to achieving your final objective.
• Room for feedback: When you establish a methodology for evaluation, you also give your project team the ability to contribute valuable feedback every step of the way. They can suggest evaluation questions and metrics of their own or signal why they think a certain aspect of the project is succeeding or struggling.

Project evaluations will increase your understanding of what’s working and what needs improvement at your company. As you conduct evaluations, use these seven tips as a basic template for success:

1. 1. Be open-minded. As you progress from your baseline to completion, remember the impact of the project you’re working on might go a little differently than you expect. That’s no cause for alarm—this is the entire point of a project evaluation. Keep an open mind about the results of your project and just as wide a perspective when it comes to generating ideas for improving your next one.
2. 2. Conduct mini-evaluations. Even if you measure how well you met your project goals definitively at the end of your current work cycle, consider conducting short-term types of evaluations along the way, too. Have meetings with the rest of your team (as well as other relevant community members) to see how well you’re meeting your initial aims. Keep a log of these midway evaluations to further illuminate your final wrap-up report.
3. 3. Decide on metrics. The more concrete your evaluation criteria, the easier time you’ll have measuring your success or failure. Decide on key metrics you can track in either a qualitative or quantitative way. Aim for specificity—you’ll get a better understanding of the big picture when you can point to more granular details.
4. 4. Experiment with evaluation methods. Try different methods of data collection and evaluation to see what yields the best understanding of your project in its totality. There are plenty of ways to measure your success, so trying different approaches will help build a more holistic and thorough evaluation process. You could also form a partnership with an external evaluation company or another third party to help get you started.
5. 5. Set up a process for feedback. Throughout all your project activities, ensure each team member has the ability to share copious amounts of feedback. By doing so, you increase the possibility of having ready-made solutions to whatever pain points come up in the results of the evaluation. Additionally, this empowers employees and creates more team cohesion.
6. 6. Share your findings. After you draft your final evaluation report, share your findings with any relevant funders and stakeholders. This sort of dissemination can increase transparency both within and outside of your organization, which can then lead to more feedback and more improvement as a result.
7. 7. Use data to revise processes. Once you take in all the case studies and other forms of data you acquire, you’ll have a final project evaluation you can use to improve decision-making for all the other plans you’ll execute in the future. Use all this hard data, feedback, and research to revise and improve your project planning and processes in both wide-angle and hyper-specific ways.

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