Monitoring Progress Toward Pathways

  • Objective: A heuristic device in deciding what to test in the theory of change by reflecting on how you are prioritizing and investing in some pathways vs. others.

Description

Track progress against indicators for each pathway and during your annual (or more frequent) reflection sessions, note the progress and graph it to compare where you are vs. where you expect to be, for each indicator.

Using the graph is a visual that can be helpful in triggering a discussion such as:

  • Why have we made so little progress on pathway 1 and 2? Was this to be expected?
  • Did we not invest enough in some pathways?  Why not?
  • Is the lesser investment and allocation of resources to a specific pathway affecting progress for other pathways?

 

Illustration of Progress by Indicator over Time

(For the sake of simplifying here, it assumes one indicator for each pathway. This is not always the case. Also, it does not show values, it is simply for illustration purposes.)

Sample chart labeled "Indicator Progress from 2012 to 2019"

 

Resources