Review and confirm your project objectives
Once you determine an issue you think is important to your audience, the next step is to critically examine the problems you identified.
Take note of which of your stakeholders have expressed interest in these objectives. If they don’t, find out why not,
and adapt your objectives accordingly. You might find that other objectives are competing for time and resources,
so determine whether that means your project should refocus on those objectives or if yours are urgent and vital
enough to earn some of those resources.
Organizing your objectives around your partners’ needs and accounting for their other priorities will provide you with
reliable guardrails (and investment) as you build out your data collection plan.
A team of community health workers reviews their results framework during a training session.
Organize your project objectives
Once you establish your key project objectives, the next step is to outline how you will achieve them.
What results do you need to prove in order to call your project a success? When working with governmental organizations, such as USAID,
the map of this journey is called a “logical framework” or “results framework.”
A results framework places your project objectives at the top of the diagram and maps out each of the intermediate results
that will add up to their success. In essence, they are project to-do lists that make you ask the question of each aspect of your solution:
Does this get me closer to achieving my project objectives?
Your organization might not need a results framework to justify your program for the purposes of funding or additional support.
However, a results framework still establishes your project’s objectives as the core focus of your program and helps you think through
all the ways you can review its progress and ultimately achieve success.
Focus on your objective
The process of turning a clear and urgent problem into precise project objectives is a crucial step before developing your
data collection program. Your project objectives should be at the core of your entire program and should be clearly defined and written
down in a document such as a results framework. Anyone on your team should be able to read and understand your approach from your results
framework, and they should use it throughout the project’s lifespan to evaluate their decisions. Including considerations from partners will
also help to ensure your project is given the proper attention and resources required for success.
It can be hard to get a project moving in the right direction. But once you have a clear destination, it is easier to determine whether
the next tool or initiative will take you closer to or further away from where you want to be.
Learn How To Validate Your Objectives