Best Practices

Structuring a results framework before you build it

The hierarchy you choose on day one shapes every report you will ever pull from a project — worth ten minutes before the first indicator is entered.

Step 1 · Learn

Understand the concept

Keep outcomes to the handful of changes the programme is genuinely accountable for, and let outputs be the concrete things delivery teams control directly — conflating the two makes both harder to report against later.

Decide which indicators are computed from a linked form or dataset versus entered manually before data collection starts; changing that after the fact means reconciling two calculation histories.

From concept to your own project

Step 2 · See an illustrative exampleAVAILABLE

Illustrative: one outcome, two outputs, each output carrying two to four indicators — narrow enough that every indicator still answers "why does this output matter?"

Step 3 · Use a real template/starter assetIN DEVELOPMENT

A downloadable framework-structuring worksheet is not yet published on this site.

Step 4 · Do it in METRA GET

Sign in to work with your organization’s real data, or request a demo to see it walked through.

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