Documenting the project

Documentation will be a major component of the project. It is very important for a number of reasons:

• to use in project evaluation
• to have an accurate record of the events
• for ongoing feedback about project progress to the community, other stakeholders and funders
• for putting together the final reports

The whole project team, plus interested community residents, needs to be involved in decisions about what gets documented and the methods used. There may be many methods used in documenting the project. The methods of recording will be determined by the type of information and its later use. For example, financial information may be best recorded in a spreadsheet, while information about an activity might be recorded by taking notes and photographs.

Decide which aspects of the project will be documented, how they will be documented and who should be involved in the documentation.

Look at the information being collected from time to time to make sure that it is meeting the project team's needs.

Questions to help plan the documentation

• Who wants and needs to have information about the project?
• What are the different kinds of information that will need to be recorded?
• What special information will the different stakeholders require?
• What are some suitable methods of recording the information?
• Which methods will be acceptable (for example, permission to use photos, videos)?
• Who will take responsibility for keeping records?

What needs to be documented

• Processes and outcomes of needs assessment
• Meetings
• Project plans and changes to plans
• Management information such as who is involved, funding and how the money is spent, resources and equipment used
• Processes used throughout the project
• Events that occur during the project that impact on it
• Strategies and activities and what happened
• Evaluation information such as data to compare with baseline data
• Who is attending project activities
• Anything else that is significant to the project

Common methods of recording project activities and progress

Note: minutes of meetings are brief notes that record what was talked about.

		Record the decisions made and responsibilities allocated in meetings
		Make sure all the relevant people get copies of the minutes Collecting relevant information and documenting it accurately are vital for evaluation.
		See 'Thinking about Evaluating the Project ' in this section

Personal field journal

We recommend that you also keep a personal record or 'field journal' of your involvement in the project. As well as being good documentation of what you are doing, it will help you to reflect on and understand your work and your environment.

Recording a project plan

There are several ways of recording a plan. The main point is that it includes all the necessary information and is easy to use by all members of the project team. Following is an example of one way to record a plan. It was developed by THS Health Promotion staff

Photocopy and use the blank worksheets at the end of this chapter

An example of a completed worksheet is for a health promotion project called 'Breathe Easy'. The problem is 'The number of 12-17 year old males coming to the health centre with respiratory problems in May-July of each year has progressively increased by at least 5% every year for the last 5 years'.

The project focuses on 'smoking tobacco' as a key risk factor for the 'respiratory problem' in this target group. This example shows strategies for only one of the objectives. A 'real life' project will have strategies for all of the objectives. Planning Worksheet