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Chapter 1
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What is the organization’s vision and mission? Does it include any reference to quality, outcomes, or achieving specific results? What does the organization want to achieve in terms of M&E (long-term M&E results)? What M&E functions must be executed in order to meet these M&E results?
When developing a list of the organization’s M&E functions, it is important to keep in mind that: a) An organization’s M&E functions should fall within its overall vision, mission, and objectives. This will ensure that M&E functions support the broader roles and responsibilities of the organization. M&E will help an organization to achieve its vision, mission and objectives by tracking progress achieving these results. b)
M&E functions should be worded as high-level activities, and not as a detailed list of tasks (e.g., an M&E function would be to “manage routine program monitoring data,” and not the detailed level tasks such as “capture data onto computer, archive forms, clean data, and analyze data”).
Deliverable: A list of the M&E functions for which the organization is responsible — sometimes referred to as an M&E job analysis (by HR professionals), or as a work breakdown structure (by project management professionals).
Step 4:
Group the M&E functions logically together and assign post/s to each logical grouping
First, determine the current number of persons responsible for M&E (full-time or part-time), usually through an assessment. The assessment can be done in different ways, either through a questionnaire that each stakeholder has to complete or through commissioned data gathering at different sites. We call this a Human Resource Inventory Report. With the organization’s M&E functions established, the next step is to logically group the functions, keeping the organization’s specific circumstances and M&E performance goals in mind when doing so. Once the functions have been logically grouped together, the next step is to determine the number and type of posts required for each logical grouping of functions. These tips (adapted from www.ad-esse.com) may help to define the number and types of posts. Organize functions so that they form logically arranged, manageable blocks of work/output (“whole tasks”). Whole tasks are sets of process steps that, when carried out together, deliver a recognizable, complete output. Whole tasks are almost the opposite of the Taylorist, assembly-line approach to tasks, in
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