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Outcome Mapping Practitioner Guide


  1. What is OM and how has it evolved?
  2. Preparing to use OM
  3. Intentional Design
    1. Vision
    2. Mission
    3. Boundary Partners
    4. Outcome Challenge
    5. Progress Markers
    6. Strategy Maps
    7. Organisational Practices
  4. The monitoring practice in Outcome Mapping
    1. Design and planning for monitoring in Outcome Mapping
    2. Monitoring of Progress Markers
    3. Monitoring of Strategy Maps
    4. Monitoring of Organisational Practices
  5. Evaluation & OM
  6. Using OM with other PM&E tools and approaches
    1. Using OM in combination with other programme logic models
    2. Using OM with other M&E approaches
  7. Introducing OM and facilitating OM workshops
  8. Use of OM for specific programmes and contexts

Original Outcome Mapping manual

The Outcome Mapping manual was published in 2001.  While still the go-to document for the basics on Outcome Mapping, the implementation and adaptations that individuals and groups have made with Outcome Mapping around the world on a gamut of different initiatives and programming provides a wealth of useful information for practitioners.  

The OM Practitioner Guide aims to bring together all of these tips, tricks and nuggets in applying OM that have occurred since the manual was published.

The key audience for the OM Practitioner Guide is OM practitioners and facilitators that ideally have already read the manual and / or attended a training; they have already decided that OM is right for them and they want to use it, or already have begun to use it and would like guidance and ideas on activities, formats, specific tools or other adaptations of the methodology. The OM Practitioner Guide will build on the original manual to provide concrete examples of complexity-oriented planning, defining and monitoring results, and planning evaluations.

The OM Practitioner Guide will:

  • Encourage the use and adaptation of OM by drawing on the experience of the broader OM community to showcase real-life examples that demonstrate non-linear use of OM stages and steps
  • Be a reference guide that builds off existing resources and experiences in order to bring to the community practical examples and theoretical summaries that come from those examples
  • Contextualize OM through nuggets / examples of use, remembering that OM is very amenable to contextualization and shaping itself into ways that are appropriate for different needs and contexts
  • Build up the experience of using OM for monitoring and for evaluation (specific tools and formats, processes, challenges, tips for data collection, data analysis and sense-making, storage and organization), especially combined with other frameworks and tools


The OM Practitioner Guide is an ongoing collaboration amongst all OM Practitioners.  The majority of content (nuggets) of the OM Practitioner Guide is in English; we encourage practitioners to contribute in other languages.
