George,
On mifos-in-africa-ghana-scenario
'...The core idea is to build a small organization that is actively
working with real customers, initially focused on Mifos but later
expanding to other open source projects, and that partners with local
organizations (such as Ashesi University and MEST) to provide
opportunities for local software entrepreneurs to gain real-world
experience, learn from more experienced software developers and
entrepreneurs, and contribute to open source projects that have an
impact in Africa....'
Working with real customers always sounds like a good to me and
building up local talent with skills and knowledge around open source
also will be important.
'..Our primary objective will be to advance Mifos’ impact in Africa,
but doing that effectively will require a strong global community..'
Having a local organisation that works with real customers and is
willing to participate within the mifos community would be a big plus
for mifos community. I would imagine that this organisation can 1)
talk with customers continously and understand their needs 2) be able
to develop on top of mifos (or other solutions) and/or communicate
with the community about whats needed to advance mifos 3) Capable of
bringing in other MFIs/NGOs should mifos suit their needs.
'..The IOSSE organization itself would likely be quite small:
A handful (3-5?) of developers, including at least one senior
developer/architect and one with strong QA experience
A product manager doubling as the Mifos community liaison...'
3-5 seems like more than enough developers to begin with. In my
opinion its always best to start with small teams and grow them
slowly. In the beginning it may be better to get 3-5 people that can
wear 'many hats' rather than specialise in QA, Dev, architect roles.
e.g. one technical team lead (would have arcitect level skills, senior
dev skills, understand product delivery)
It would be great to have someone who acted as 'product champion' of
mifos on behalf of 'African/West African MFIs'. The same as if a
number of MFIs (in a region) joined together and hire a person
reponsible for understanding what they need from mifos and who
communicates regularily with the community to achieve these things (in
tandem with local dev.)
'...From an overall talent development perspective, IOSSE could offer
mentorship to emerging local software entrepreneurs and exposure to
real-world software development and entrepreneurship practices...'
It might be needed to secure long term supply of personnel with
software skills but it also might be a hard thing to pull off. On the
job learning is the best soft with regards software but you are now
requiring that you need a number of senior software talent that also
have good 'mentorship' skills also.
So in summary,
I like the prospect of a local organisation looking after the
interests of local MFIs in any way they can, and that this
organisation would become heavily involved in communication with the
community and the steeting of development on mifos towards the needs
of their local MFIs.
The mentorship & training/education sounds harder to pull off and more
of a stage 2/3. If your small local organisation begins to work and
benifit local MFIs the needs for thier services will continue and grow
and you can decide to slowly grow the team taking on junior talent and
mentoring/training up and in within the org.
Not much feedback, more a comment.
regards,
Keith.
On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 8:35 PM, George Conard <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi folks - I've outlined the Ghana scenario I'm building a business plan for
> at http://georgeconard.com/blog/2011/07/18/mifos-in-africa-ghana-scenario/.
> If you're interested, please have a look - I'd love to get
> feedback/ideas/criticisms/whatever - comment here or on the blog.
> As the thinking on Miguel's idea for a Mifos umbrella organization / action
> plan evolves and becomes more specific, I'll look forward to engaging to
> figure out with all of you where the orgs I'm looking at might fit in.
> I'll also be building out a business plan for a different flavor of
> organization in East Africa, focused more on startup incubation starting
> with a Mifos company that works to mobile-ify Mifos in conjunction with
> community efforts, and will have an outline of that posted in the next few
> days.
> Cheers,
> -george
> George Conard
> US: +1 206 778 7429
> Kenya: +254 (0) 705 038 704
> Ghana: +233 (0) 54 975 4222
> www.georgeconard.com
> [email protected]
> @GeorgeConard
>
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