choosing-how-to-track-progress
This is one of a series of guides for collaborative environmental research and advocacy projects. "Choosing How to Track Progress" takes with the goals that the garden members prioritized for the upcoming year in the previous workshop, helps you choose how to measure progress towards the goals and points you towards fun and "field-proof" measuring activities. This guide covers how to do this on paper or on an online spreadsheet.
Planning this event
Ahead of time:
- Set aside an hour for you to review the goals prioritized by the garden members at the end of the previous workshop, Setting Goals. This is Activity 1.
- Call a small meeting with the most involved gardeners to review. This is Activity 2.
- Activity 3 will involve the entire group again. Look ahead two weeks and pick a time for a 2 hour session that is convenient for the most people involved for .
- Find a space, it may be useful to be indoors with enough chairs, restrooms, and some wall space, etc, and send out invites.
Materials to have on hand:
- Depending on whether the leadership team prefers to work on paper or online, either:
- Draw a four-column x 5-row table on paper and xerox it for each garden leader
- Set up an online spreadsheet you can all use, perhaps in GoogleSpreadsheets or in ethercalc
Activity 1:
This activity is designed for you to do individually. Here are the steps you will preform:
- List your goals
- Quantify your goals into specific objectives (be specific and set numerical targets when possible)
- Design how you will work toward the goal (Ask yourself: "what will we actually do to achieve this goal?")
- Choose how to measure progress towards your objectives (each way of measuring will be called a "metric" and will either rely on some form of photographic documentation or manual tracking using the FiveBoroughFarm toolkit.
See how these four elements can be organized into a matrix:
| Goal | Objective | Program Design | Metrics |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goal 1 | . | . | . |
| Goal 2 | . | . | . |
| Goal 3 | . | . | . |
Here's an sketch example that omits the first column and instead begins with Objectives:
Here's an example from an actual garden in Newark that includes multiple objectives for each goal, and adds a notes column at the end:
Activity 2:
Bring the draft matrix to review with your most involved collaborators.
- Carefully read each objective for realistic targets.
- Talk through each program you've designed to make sure the workplan makes sense.
- Consider the metrics you've chosen to track your progress as you will have to be either manually tracking of photographing in some way throughout the season to collect the data.
Once the matrix reflects your intentions fairly well, it's time to schedule a meeting to present it back to the whole group.
Activity 3:
This activity is about reviewing the matrix with the whole group. As facilitator, plan to explain the matrix to the group and then open up for discussion.
- Begin with restating the goals that everyone had prioritized in the Setting Goals workshop, and show them along the left edge of the matrix.
- Then explain how these goals have been quantified into specific objectives.
- Show that each objective has an action, or program design, that's been designed to achieve the objective.
- Finally, discuss how we will track our progress using metrics -- either the photography or the manual tracking.