"The purpose of this guidance note is to support the planning and implementation of fit-for purpose project real-time evaluations (RTEs) in accordance with the Adaptation Fund’s Evaluation Policy. The intended audience for this guidance note is people who plan and manage Fund evaluation activities, primarily within Fund Implementing Entities, the Technical Evaluation Reference Group of the Adaptation Fund (AF-TERG), and the Fund secretariat and Board. It is intended as a flexible resource that can be adapted to various Fund contexts. As such, this guidance note may also be useful to others conducting RTEs or interested in the topic of RTEs and evaluations in the climate change adaptation community and wider. This guidance note defines what an RTE is and what are its benefits. It provides guidance on when to undertake RTEs, who should do it, and how to plan for an RTE, and conduct data collection, analysis, and reporting." (Page 2)

"[...] an RTE encompasses, “a range of evaluative approaches, reviews, and assessments with the purpose of understanding and articulating issues that need to be addressed in an ongoing development or humanitarian response, that can be fed back immediately into programming, decisionmaking and management processes with the overall aim of improving the response.” The primary objective of a RTE is to provide immediate evaluative learning while the evaluated program or project is being implemented to support timely decision making and adaptive management for improvement. RTEs are both retrospective and prospective: they look back over the project to assess prior implementation, but they also look forward and provide actionable recommendations to improve ongoing and future performance. One common question is how RTEs differ from mid-term reviews. Mid-term reviews typically occur halfway through a project/programme to inform the remaining period of implementation. In contrast, RTEs can be conducted at any point during an intervention or even iteratively throughout the project/programme. RTEs are typically stand-alone exercises, designed to be rapid and efficient and conducted within a brief timeframe ranging from one to three months. However, their length can vary, and sometimes a series of RTEs is conducted at regular intervals throughout a project/programme cycle as part of a more comprehensive evaluation plan." (Page 3)