20 Differences between Monitoring and Evaluation

Monitoring and evaluation are important management tools that are necessary to track the progress and facilitate decision making for present and future interventions. However, there are lots of differences between them. Some major differences between monitoring and evaluation are listed below:

Monitoring	Evaluation
Monitoring is the systematic and routine collection of information about the programs/projects activities	Evaluation is the periodic assessment of the programs/projects activities
It is ongoing process which is done to see if things/activities are going on track or not i.e. it regularly tracks the program	It is done on a periodic basis to measure the success against the objective i.e. it is an in-depth assessment of the program
Monitoring is to be done starting from the initial stage of the projects	Evaluation is to be done after certain point of time of the project, usually at the mid of the project, completion of the project or while moving from one stage to another stage of the projects/programs
Monitoring is done usually by the internal members of the team	Evaluation is done mainly done by the external members. However, sometimes it may be also done by internal members of the team or by both internal and external members in a combined way
Monitoring provides information about the current status and thus helps to take immediate remedial actions, if necessary	Evaluation provides recommendations, information for long term planning and lessons for organizational growth and success
It focuses on input, activities and output	It focuses on outcomes, impacts and overall goal
Monitoring process includes regular meetings, interview, monthly and quarterly reviews etc. Usually quantitative data.	Evaluation process includes intense data collection, both qualitative and quantitative
It has multiple points of data collection	Data collection is done at intervals only
It gives answer about the present scenario of the project towards achieving planned results considering the human resources, budget, materials, activities and outputs	It assesses the relevance, impact, sustainability, effectiveness and efficiency of the projects
Monitoring studies the present information and experiences of the project	Evaluation studies the past experience of the project performance
Monitoring checks whether the project did what it said it would do	Evaluation checks whether what the project did had the impact that it intended
Helps to improve project design and functioning of current project	Helps to improve project design of future projects
Monitoring looks at detail of activities	Evaluation does not look at detail of activities but rather looks at a bigger picture
It compares the current progress with the planned progress	It looks at the achievement of the programs along with both positive/negative, intended/unintended effects
Information obtained from monitoring is more useful to the implementation/management team	Information obtained from evaluation is useful to all the stakeholders
Monitoring result is used for informed actions and decisions	Evaluation result is used for planning of new programs and interventions
Answers the question “Are we doing things right?”	Answers the question “Are we doing right thing?”
Regular report and updates about the project/program act a deliverables here	Reports with recommendations and lessons act as a deliverable here
Good or effective monitoring does not rely on evaluation results	Good or effective evaluation relies to some extent on good monitoring
There are few quality checks in monitoring	There are many quality checks in evaluation
It provides information for evaluation	It provides information for proper planning