When Outcome Mapping was created in the late 1990s, development projects and programs began using it for planning and clarifying their intent around social change, and for monitoring.  The planning aspect was dominant as individuals and groups innovated, adapted and combined OM with other monitoring tools.  Cases began to slowly be written and shared around OM for monitoring - still all based on the Intentional Design - but coming in for the specific purpose of crafting monitoring systems, even when an initiative had not been conceived or planned using the Intentional Design.  Thus was also born the fusion of the logframe and Outcome Mapping, whereby OM would come in to support and strengthen and clarify the intent of an already established logframe, and create appropriate tools to measure behaviour change Progress Markers.  

With any M&E system, we must identify the use of our monitoring data, develop the appropriate data collection tools and protocol, ensure we have the right storage systems, plan for and do analysis and sense-making, or interpretation, and then use the data: for program improvement, for strategy development, for accountability purposes, for communication, for advocacy. And with Outcome Mapping, we are encouraged to do this in a participatory way with various different stakeholders, including Boundary Partners, engaged along the way, in order to promote both social learning and organizational learning.  

It is our hope that this section of the guide grows to be the most popular one, as more and more practitioners share how they have incorporated OM into their monitoring systems and practice.  OM certainly doesn't need to be your only approach or set of tools in your monitoring toolbox, but we firmly believe that it is one that will make your monitoring outputs more meaningful and useful.