Follow-up is defined as “the monitoring and evaluation of the impacts of a project or plan for management of, and communication about the performance of that project or plan”. However, to avoid overlapping with the participatory monitoring and evaluation and operation and maintenance phases, this factsheet will focus on the following principles:

• Follow-up as spin-off projects: a project that exploits or builds on earlier work or that repeats something that has already been done.
• Follow-up as internal supervision of completed projects: the continuous monitoring of the activities by the project implementers, and possible improvements to the existing project.

Advantages

• Managers and other stakeholders including donors need to know the extent to which their projects are meeting their objectives and leading to their desired effects
• Follow-up builds greater transparency and accountability in terms of use of project resources
• Internal follow-up alerts managers to actual and potential project weaknesses, problems and shortcomings before it is too late
• Future planning and programme development is improved when guided by lessons learned from experience.
• Successful implemented projects serve as reference for future applications for funds
• In overall, it avoids that the implemented projects are forgotten with the time

Disadvantages

• Internal follow-up of projects require human power and extra activities, which are mostly not financed by the funding agency after the project completion
• To follow-up completed projects might deviate the attention and efforts of the members of the team working in new projects

Literature: 

A. Morrison-Saunders, J. Arts. Exploring the dimensions of EIA follow-up.