Projects, outcomes and activities

Monitoring answers one question throughout a project: are we doing what we said, and is it making the difference we promised? Pulseform follows the real project cycle: set up the project, its outcomes and activities, define indicators and how they will be collected, record the values, then read the dashboard and send the donor report, with risks and complaints tracked all along. New to these terms? See the glossary.

Project → Outcome → Activity

• A project is the funded piece of work.
• An outcome is a change the project is trying to produce.
• An activity is something you do to produce it.

Indicators, risks, complaints and reports all attach to the project.

Your account needs the Monitoring service. Open it from Monitoring in the top menu.

1. Open Projects and create a new project.
2. Fill in its code and name, dates, budget and currency, location and sector.
3. Choose its status: active, completed, suspended or cancelled.

Open Outcomes and add each change the project aims for. Give each one a level:

• Output: what you produce, such as trainings delivered or wells built.
• Outcome: what changes because of it, such as skills used or water consumed.
• Impact: the longer-term effect you contribute to.

Open Activities and add each activity, linked to the outcome it serves. Fill in both pairs of dates:

• planned start and end,
• actual start and end.

The gap between the planned and actual dates shows how your plans compare with reality.

Planned, in progress, done, delayed and cancelled.

• Delayed is set for you: when an activity's planned end date passes and it isn't done or cancelled, it's marked delayed.
• Done is not set for you. Mark activities done yourself, because your reports count only activities marked done.

Tip Don't delete a cancelled activity. Mark it cancelled, so the record shows the decision.

Set up indicators and monitoring plans.