Benjamin Kwasi AddomThe Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA)Netherlands
To get it started for others to join in.
I think when the developer or the NGO has the goal to develop the service "for" the user without understanding the needs of the user and involving them. I know all the implications of this type "participatory" venture but....
I always quote Richard Heeks who suggested a 3-step integrated approach to the application of ICTs to development projects:
i) Identifying the development objective of the project/service;
ii) Identifying the new and/or reengineered information requirements needed to meet those objectives; and
iii) Identifying the role that ICTs and other information-handling technologies have to play in meeting those information requirements.
Most of the time, the developers and NGOs think that they know better and once developed, it will be used.
Amadou DaffeCoders4Africa United States of America
I agree Ben and I will add my perspective as a software developer who wants to develop solutions for farmers.
ICT software or application development should be a user-centric approach, whereby developers collaborate and work closely with users or some categories of stakeholders. As a stakeholder you should be able to make the right decisions at any time during the project, without jeopardizing the life of the project or the product.
With that in mind, the Agile methodology of software development should be adopted while builde ICT-Agriculture based solutions. Agile methodology is the most effective way to develop software in direct collaborationwith stakeholders and provide a good quality product at the ned. Instead of tackling the problem as a whole, solve it in smaller deliverable chunks that can be approved and used by stakeholder immediately.
The definition goes as follow "Agile methodology is an approach to project management, typically used in software development. It helps teams respond to the unpredictability of building software through incremental, iterative work cadences, known as sprints. But before discussing agile methodologies further, itÂ’s best to first turn to the methodology that inspired it: waterfall, or traditional sequential development."
The technique such as "User Stories" (An Agile Technique) can be beneficial in helping users or owners determine their needs and specify their requirements easily.
If we take the example of an application that allows farmers to check market prices for their crops.
A user story can go as such:
Actor: Farmer "As a farmer I want to get the current price of peanut in kilograms by using my non smartphone"
I agree with Ben and to add up; one key mistake not only NGO-s but other development/commercial projects commit is putting all their bet on mobile phones. Like any other technology, mobile phones are “effect multiplier” and it only works when there is an underlying robust system (either an agro-advisory or private extension) which effects get multiplied. If there is no underlying system or process and mobile phones are just introduced, as a magic bullet, it seldom works.
I agree with Ben and Sharbendu's points and I think a number of pitfalls have been highlighted during the course of this debate. A couple more that I feel strongly about are - Content: understanding the complexity of sourcing and aggregating content (as per the previous conversation) - designing the content management system so that it can meet farmer's localised content needs but at the same time is designed so that the service can scale. Another pitfall that is linked to scale is ensuring (if you do want to scale) that services are designed from the start to enable scale - such as using efficient technologies, working with partners who have existing assets such as marketing & distributing capabilties so you can reach a large number of farmers cost-effectively. Fiona
Most of the respondents have already talked about farmers’ need assessment and mapping, which are two critical components for agro-information services. I will like to highlight a few more which, according to me, plays equally important roles in making a service success or failure.
In my experience in both development world and business world, I have found that mostly people in development world would take a one-sided stand, when it comes to developing services for people. While it is very important to design services that would deliver certain benefits to the community from pure development point of view, it is also very important to see how the same benefits will continue to reach the community even after the development intervention has stopped.
This call for a business case for development work and many NGO-s and development agencies do not consider this as a key factor while designing mobile services. While working with NGO-s in India, what we have found that, in most of the cases, NGO-s expects the community to carry on the service, once the support is over, since it is bringing in considerable benefits to the community. However, in reality, although community derives significant benefits, they often lack the motivation and competency to manage such services on their own. At the same time, if there is no business (read profit), businesses do not find any interest in adopting such services, resulting into eventual death or even if the service survives, it never reaches scale.
Mobile operators, on the other hand, mostly make mistake, considering agro-advisory services to operate on the same principles of other value added services (mVAS) like entertainment or news. While the target customer segments for both may be same, the decision factors for subscribing to such services are completely different. Entertainment VAS would bring in instant gratification of user needs (someone likes a song and downloads it, then and there) while utility VAS (e.g. agro-advisory) will only provide a deferred gratification provided the service is used by the user continually (farmers may get better yield or manage pests with lesser pesticides if they listen to the agro-advisories). Hence utility VAS needs high degree of “trust factor” in the user’s mind in order to make the user stick-on to the service even if it does not bring in any instant benefit to them.
A case in point is IKSL service in India, which is backed up with the goodwill of IFFCO, the largest and most preferred fertilizer supplier in India, whose name itself brings in some amount of trust to the farmers. Hence IKSL service is trusted by farmers more than other similar services that ore offered (even free!).
Accordingly, the marketing channel of the service also needs to be different from a conventional entertainment VAS. Conventional promotions like push SMS or Out Bound Diallers (OBD) not necessarily convinces a farmer to subscribe to a mobile agro-advisory. Alternative channels, like affiliation to farmers groups, bundling with agri-inputs, customization to contract farming etc are some of the innovative approaches which have been tried in India. However, there are still lot of scope for innovation in this area.
Lastly, MNO-s and NGO-s also need to design the services keeping in the mind that information alone does not solve all problems of farmers. Even simple things like market rates etc, which do not need any further action from the information provider’s side, needs lot of value addition in terms of hyper-localization, demand and supply syndication etc in order to make it valuable and interesting to the farmers in long term. Hence an information-service which links various service delivery agents like, agri-input marketers, warehouses, laboratories etc will have better attractiveness for farmers in comparison to simple information push service.
I find it interesting that NGO's and MNO's are grouped together in the question for today. I find their perspectives -- and the pitfalls they face -- to be quite different. One problem that NGO's have that MNO's usually don't have (and which has been alluded to already today) is distinguishing between a demand analysis (part of developing a business case) and "needs assessment". I see these as quite different in that an NGO often does a "needs assessment" which documents what farmers say they need but it does not have the discipline needed in a business analysis. If NGO's are to provide such services, they need to prioritize features that they will provide and sort out which are valuable enough for someone to pay for -- e.g., farmers directly; farmer associations; sponsoring organizations; big buyers. It is far too easy to document a long list of "needs" that is too long, leading to a service that is not financially sustainable.
One more comment -- NGO's are often funded by donors on a project basis. This can easily drive them to a project orientation, especially when donors call for "success stories" and do not have the incentive nor the process to follow up after a project to see if a service they have supported is continuing and scaling. Fortunately, many NGO's, at least the larger ones, have other funding sources so can take a longer term perspective on the services they help launch.
To get it started for others to join in.
I think when the developer or the NGO has the goal to develop the service "for" the user without understanding the needs of the user and involving them. I know all the implications of this type "participatory" venture but....
I always quote Richard Heeks who suggested a 3-step integrated approach to the application of ICTs to development projects:
i) Identifying the development objective of the project/service;
ii) Identifying the new and/or reengineered information requirements needed to meet those objectives; and
iii) Identifying the role that ICTs and other information-handling technologies have to play in meeting those information requirements.
Most of the time, the developers and NGOs think that they know better and once developed, it will be used.
Ben
<p>See next post</p>
I agree Ben and I will add my perspective as a software developer who wants to develop solutions for farmers.
ICT software or application development should be a user-centric approach, whereby developers collaborate and work closely with users or some categories of stakeholders. As a stakeholder you should be able to make the right decisions at any time during the project, without jeopardizing the life of the project or the product.
With that in mind, the Agile methodology of software development should be adopted while builde ICT-Agriculture based solutions. Agile methodology is the most effective way to develop software in direct collaborationwith stakeholders and provide a good quality product at the ned. Instead of tackling the problem as a whole, solve it in smaller deliverable chunks that can be approved and used by stakeholder immediately.
The definition goes as follow "Agile methodology is an approach to project management, typically used in software development. It helps teams respond to the unpredictability of building software through incremental, iterative work cadences, known as sprints. But before discussing agile methodologies further, itÂ’s best to first turn to the methodology that inspired it: waterfall, or traditional sequential development."
The technique such as "User Stories" (An Agile Technique) can be beneficial in helping users or owners determine their needs and specify their requirements easily.
If we take the example of an application that allows farmers to check market prices for their crops.
A user story can go as such:
Actor: Farmer "As a farmer I want to get the current price of peanut in kilograms by using my non smartphone"
I agree with Ben and to add up; one key mistake not only NGO-s but other development/commercial projects commit is putting all their bet on mobile phones. Like any other technology, mobile phones are “effect multiplier” and it only works when there is an underlying robust system (either an agro-advisory or private extension) which effects get multiplied. If there is no underlying system or process and mobile phones are just introduced, as a magic bullet, it seldom works.
I agree with Ben and Sharbendu's points and I think a number of pitfalls have been highlighted during the course of this debate. A couple more that I feel strongly about are - Content: understanding the complexity of sourcing and aggregating content (as per the previous conversation) - designing the content management system so that it can meet farmer's localised content needs but at the same time is designed so that the service can scale. Another pitfall that is linked to scale is ensuring (if you do want to scale) that services are designed from the start to enable scale - such as using efficient technologies, working with partners who have existing assets such as marketing & distributing capabilties so you can reach a large number of farmers cost-effectively. Fiona
Most of the respondents have already talked about farmers’ need assessment and mapping, which are two critical components for agro-information services. I will like to highlight a few more which, according to me, plays equally important roles in making a service success or failure.
In my experience in both development world and business world, I have found that mostly people in development world would take a one-sided stand, when it comes to developing services for people. While it is very important to design services that would deliver certain benefits to the community from pure development point of view, it is also very important to see how the same benefits will continue to reach the community even after the development intervention has stopped.
This call for a business case for development work and many NGO-s and development agencies do not consider this as a key factor while designing mobile services. While working with NGO-s in India, what we have found that, in most of the cases, NGO-s expects the community to carry on the service, once the support is over, since it is bringing in considerable benefits to the community. However, in reality, although community derives significant benefits, they often lack the motivation and competency to manage such services on their own. At the same time, if there is no business (read profit), businesses do not find any interest in adopting such services, resulting into eventual death or even if the service survives, it never reaches scale.
Mobile operators, on the other hand, mostly make mistake, considering agro-advisory services to operate on the same principles of other value added services (mVAS) like entertainment or news. While the target customer segments for both may be same, the decision factors for subscribing to such services are completely different. Entertainment VAS would bring in instant gratification of user needs (someone likes a song and downloads it, then and there) while utility VAS (e.g. agro-advisory) will only provide a deferred gratification provided the service is used by the user continually (farmers may get better yield or manage pests with lesser pesticides if they listen to the agro-advisories). Hence utility VAS needs high degree of “trust factor” in the user’s mind in order to make the user stick-on to the service even if it does not bring in any instant benefit to them.
A case in point is IKSL service in India, which is backed up with the goodwill of IFFCO, the largest and most preferred fertilizer supplier in India, whose name itself brings in some amount of trust to the farmers. Hence IKSL service is trusted by farmers more than other similar services that ore offered (even free!).
Accordingly, the marketing channel of the service also needs to be different from a conventional entertainment VAS. Conventional promotions like push SMS or Out Bound Diallers (OBD) not necessarily convinces a farmer to subscribe to a mobile agro-advisory. Alternative channels, like affiliation to farmers groups, bundling with agri-inputs, customization to contract farming etc are some of the innovative approaches which have been tried in India. However, there are still lot of scope for innovation in this area.
continued to next post
continued from earlier post...
Lastly, MNO-s and NGO-s also need to design the services keeping in the mind that information alone does not solve all problems of farmers. Even simple things like market rates etc, which do not need any further action from the information provider’s side, needs lot of value addition in terms of hyper-localization, demand and supply syndication etc in order to make it valuable and interesting to the farmers in long term. Hence an information-service which links various service delivery agents like, agri-input marketers, warehouses, laboratories etc will have better attractiveness for farmers in comparison to simple information push service.
I find it interesting that NGO's and MNO's are grouped together in the question for today. I find their perspectives -- and the pitfalls they face -- to be quite different. One problem that NGO's have that MNO's usually don't have (and which has been alluded to already today) is distinguishing between a demand analysis (part of developing a business case) and "needs assessment". I see these as quite different in that an NGO often does a "needs assessment" which documents what farmers say they need but it does not have the discipline needed in a business analysis. If NGO's are to provide such services, they need to prioritize features that they will provide and sort out which are valuable enough for someone to pay for -- e.g., farmers directly; farmer associations; sponsoring organizations; big buyers. It is far too easy to document a long list of "needs" that is too long, leading to a service that is not financially sustainable.
Judy
One more comment -- NGO's are often funded by donors on a project basis. This can easily drive them to a project orientation, especially when donors call for "success stories" and do not have the incentive nor the process to follow up after a project to see if a service they have supported is continuing and scaling. Fortunately, many NGO's, at least the larger ones, have other funding sources so can take a longer term perspective on the services they help launch.
Judy