Monitoring and Evaulation

 

Under monitoring and evaluation, we did a small activity where our group went to the agriculture field to do monitoring and evaluation. I realized that in group we need cooperation and coordination because in our group one leaded and appointed certain roles like counting total number or tress, tree that bears fruits and some noting it down. However, I faced challenges of not being able to cross thick bushes and counting the trees. I looked around the trees that need weeding. From this activity, I have learned how to do monitoring and evaluation in the project and the importance of monitoring and evaluation. I also realized that monitoring and evaluation will also help to identify on-going challenges of the project and improvements to be made in the project. I am sure that this monitoring and evaluation will give the important data for strategic planning and implementation of project activities and also to allocate and reallocate resources in better ways.

Figure 2: Monitoring and Evaluation

 

Field Vist

 

Firstly, I will begin my reflection by thanking our tutor for initiating the field visit where I explored learning beyond the classroom. I realized that I learn more outside the classroom through observations and listening. I was able to get the deeper information of million fruit tree plantation and the challenges that they faced. I could relate those challenges because I have seen those desup back at my village also facing same challenges. I was able to understand more on project cycle management in relate with the million fruit tree plantation project.  

 

This field visit has helped our group in getting the required information to do our group assignment in making video presentation. However, our group has faced few challenges in not getting little information from them and had to ask another person. However, it was of more learning and I felt happy.

Result Based Management

 

Watching the videos of Result based management, I understood that the result based management is a management strategy that focuses on performance and the achievement of results (outputs, outcomes and impacts). Addition to that the aim of RBM is to manage an intervention while trying to ensure its relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and other quality criteria.

I also understood the differences in the terms of output, outcomes and the impacts as the video presented so clearly. I also understood that the result based management recognizes challenges and also helps in addressing the challenges. We were given group task where we were suppose to review sample projects given by our tutor and had to make presentation through any modality. The presentation was focused on critical analysis on each of the stages of the project management cycle. My group members and I did a video presentation on the project biogas. This project was based on result based management. I got the deeper understanding on the terminologies used in result based management. From this activity, I learnt all the stages of project in biogas.

 

Project Design

 

It has always been curious for me to know about designing the project because till now I had been learning about all the project concepts. I learnt the importance of knowing how to design the project. So, as I was reading about the project design, I got a clear concept on what actually is a project design. I was even surprised that project design involves stakeholder analysis because I have never thought about including stakeholders in project. I was simply in a box where I thought project will be done by one person or an organization. But after learning this, I realized that I lack even a basic knowledge about projects. I have noticed good reasons for involving stakeholder’s analysis.  Stakeholder matrix and stake holder table was something new I learnt from today’s class.

Logical framework is one of the project design tool and I looked into some samples of logical framework and then I did an activity on developing the logical framework of my project. When we had a peer review I was able to make good analysis on my friends project, learned how to plan in a systemic way and also gained some new project ideas. I found such activities effective in learning. Below is the designed logical framework of my project.

	Summary	Indicators	Evidences	Assumptions
Goal	To provide the best marketing of unsold fruits of rural farmers.	Farmers complaining about poor markets to sell the product.	Interviews   Horticulture income surveys.	Increasing number of fruit growers but no proper market.
Purpose	Lessen the fruit loss and encouraging rural farming especially horticulture with the best marketing system	Increased fruit loss in rural parts of Bhutan.	Interviews	Job opportunities and more youths will be encouraged.
Output	Increase in income generation, reduced fruit loss and proper marketing	Increased selling of fruits in markets.	Surveys, interviews and statical record.	Income generation with proper marketing
Activities	Establishment of mini industry for fruit drying.   Recruiting few workers to work.   Collecting Fruits.   Processing.   Marketing.	More people opening business.   Seeking job opportunities.	Review   Interview   Statics.	Encouraged rural fruit growers.   Well structured fruit marketing.   Youth’s employment.

 

 

 

Project Identification

 

Before learning this module, I have no idea how the projects are identified and data collections are done. Learning how the projects are identified, I came to understand that project is not just a small task because there are many steps to be followed in order to identify the projects. I learnt the importance of doing need assessment, situational analysis, and research, and data collection, analysis of data, findings and capacity assessment in project identification. I realized that if I were to do projects, I must follow all the steps in project to identify the projects.

Project Conception

We had an activity where out tutor created a google doc to fill up in the area choosing one project that we are interested in. For the first time I experienced writing in google docs and funny thing happened when one of our friend deleted the entire google docs. I was in the middle of writing my project conception when everything got deleted and the class had a hard time how to retrieve it. From such incidences I learnt the importance of exploring in knowing the software skills and also to know how to use different google sites an slides. 

Introduction to Project Management

 

I had a very interesting session on the first chapter ‘Introduction to Project Management’. Even though, I have heard and seen many people doing projects, I have never been so curious on why and how people do projects. In the beginning, I didn’t have a very clear idea about the projects. However, as our tutor was teaching on the topic ‘Introduction to Project Management’, I got a deeper understanding on what actually are a project and the features of the projects.

Learning the origin of the project management and few key terms were new knowledge to me.  The concept and the key terms very not very familiar to me because till now, I have never thought about the projects so deep but today’s session taught me that there are also certain key terms that we need to understand in a projects. It actually was a sense of guilty for not being able to know basic terms of projects being a university student. However, having learnt these, I expect to learn deeper on the project management.

Few challenges I faced were, difficulties in understanding the new terms related to project like ‘inflation and ‘deliverable’. It was because I have never heard of these words in related with the projects. Besides the challenges, I could capture few examples of projects in Bhutan and the most interesting thing I learnt is that project are of two types known as social and economic projects.