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FOCUSING

Every documentation process starts by agreeing on some details: Who is to participate in it? Who will co-ordinate this process? When is it going to be ready? What information is there available? What information needs to be found? Is there a need for someone to facilitate the whole process? And most important, do all participants share the same objectives? At the same time, it is necessary to limit our view, and focus on a few activities or results.

Family farming is about farmers, crops, landscape management, economy and more. How do I zoom in to a special subject and draw some lessons?

Avoid a lack of clarity
Pankaj Gupta, at the training workshop ENRAP-IFAD,
October 2009
IFAD and ENRAP carried out a training workshop in Wu Zhong city, in the Ninxia province, China, in order to introduce the idea of systematization, and start a capacity building process This workshop involved project staff, IFAD management staff, and also other resource persons. Looking back at the workshop, one of the things we saw was the need to have a narrow focus. We recognised a lack of clarity among participants, and the need to select one of the sub-components of the programme - instead of looking at everything and every single activity. In this sense, it is very important to refer back to project plans and older documents, and thus make a selection. (It follows that a large multi-project makes a complete systematization exercise unfeasible. This does not preclude considering different teams, or different attempts...)

Opportunistic vs strategic paths
Philippe Villeval and Philippe Lavigne Delville
in "Learning and sharing experience", 2004
In this very interesting document, Philippe Villeval and Philippe Lavigne Delville present a series of "lessons for learning processes in NGOs". Looking in detail at the importance of capitalisation, they define this process as the "transition from experience to sharable knowledge". One of the issues they look at is what exactly should one look at, or "what knowledge should one capitalise". They present two different (andpotentially complementary) paths. One is the opportunistic path: ask someone who has had an experience to capitalise ot if he or she has time and is intereste dindoing so, and if the experience in question presents a certain interest for the organisation. The second option is the strategic path. One may identify in advance the orgaisation's crucial knowledge and capitalise the experiences related to this knowledge.

Selecting a major focus
Cordula Eckert, EMATER/RS, Porto Alegre, Brazil, October 2009
Selecting a major focus to follow is a major starting point, as the same experience can be looked at, and analysed, according to different perspectives. It is therefore important that this is agreed and understood by all participants. For example, if we are looking at the work of a women's association which produces and sells some specific products, we can document the process in terms of the production techniques, or also by focusing on the way in which all women are organised. Of course, there is also the option to consider different perspectives simultaneously, but this means that the whole documentation process becomes more complex. In this case, it may be better to do it separate stages.

How broad, or how narrow? And who decides?
Edith Fernandez Baca, ETC Andes, October 2009
For several years, ETC Andes has been facilitating different documentation processes, such as those implemented with RAAA in Junin and with El Taller in Arequipa (both in Peru). A brief comparison gives us a few clear lessons. In all cases we tried to involve as many people as possible. Not surprisingly, it turned out to be harder for a larger group to reach a decision on what specific topics to systematise. How broad should it be? In the case of El Taller, broader objectives led us to have various documentation processes going on simultaneously. This is something into which we had to invest some time.