My Reflection – Visualization

Challenge

I am the member of the business analyst team from AAA consultancy company. The challenge I choose  for this exercise is about farmers facing issue on water scarcity for their agriculture land & ended up  with low yield. This project is to understand what will be the better technology and crops that can be  the better solution to farmers to cultivate their farming and yield better during this water crisis. This  project should not take more than 100 days and scope is limited to only 50 SQ.KM. This project is not  working on reason for water crisis and not bringing any new source of water. This really requires a  design thinking approach as we don’t have any past data relevant to this water crisis problem, type of  crops to cultivate (or) any earlier relevant project related to this.

Selection

I choose Visualization tool for solving this problem because this will help us to better understand the  problem, where to focus, who are the target people, simple schematic steps to be followed and shared  feedbacks can be captured at the beginning and so end result can be achieved efficiently. For this  exercise, farmers different group of people with varying land sizes, age, demographic difference,  experience in different crops cultivation, financial status for initial investment and all these details to be  understood thoroughly to identify and propose better solution. Hence we choose Visualization tool.

Application

I start this process by drawing simple schematic on agriculture farming land, marking the SQ.Km area  that I am going to cover in this project. To get this data, I will approach local government office to get  this land area details and the same will be marked on the schematic. Then I will mark schematic with  different variety types of crops farmers currently cultivating, for this I will engage few groups of farmers  to share their info on what they are cultivating, and I will create a kind of survey questions that will  capture the following with a time frame. (A)What type of crop do you cultivate & what is the season? (B)  How much amount of water is required for different crops and where is the water source? (C)What is  expense and profit details (D) What are the current issues farmers facing. I will also get the annual and  seasonal rainfall details for the area which I choose from the Internet (or) thru’ government offices. I will  also collect the sand from the area for soil test and understand the suitable crop to cultivate. This can be  get tested from Agriculture office

With all the above data, I can plot the different hand-written graphs showing land area, types of soil,  what types of crops to cultivate, what farmers are currently cultivating, water availability status, best  suitable crop based on type of soil, best suitable technology like drip irrigation or sprinkler technology  which can save water, indoor or outdoor farming. These hand-written graphs will explore possible  solution to this problem. For this, I will engage group of farmers, agriculture officers, water technology  service agencies, to get the collective brainstorming ideas to test it them for best possible and feasible  solution for farmers with time frame.

Insight

The insight what I have gained from this exercise is, the effectiveness of your solution is really based on  the deeper understanding you have on the problem & steps involved. Without understanding the  problem, the focus areas and target groups are hidden and you will not know what would be the best  solution is. During this exercise, the initial schematic had incorrect steps and that was avoided and  corrected from collective feedback from the team upfront.  This really made possible because of  Visualization tool which saves your effort and timing throughout the exercise. Will be really helpful and  easily understandable by everyone on what they are working, their roles throughout the exercise

Approach

I found that the most valuable aspect is the shared insights and learning, next time I would use the  visualization activity as a starting point for a series of design thinking activities. Then the revised  schematic that incorporates their combined feedback can serve as a reference tool throughout the  remainder of their work.

