Intended audience: DataKind Volunteers
Checking that there is no obvious alternative or existing transferable solution before agreeing to complete a project is essential, because being able to learn from, apply, and expand other people’s work instead of starting from scratch is typically worth the time it takes to onboard to the existing solutions. Here are some tips and places to look for existing solutions:
- The best place to start is by asking the Project Champion what they know. Have they already attempted a solution? If so, what were their takeaways? Are there any other organizations that they know of doing similar projects? Did someone inspire this project idea? If so, look into these projects to see if they have published anything open source
- Another great place to start is browsing past DataKind projects: explore resources and case studies for relevant materials or examples.
- Conduct online research of the landscape of the potential projects by searching for examples of both the technical solution and the industry solution. Use this catalog of existing digital solutions to identify if someone has already created a tool that would meet the organization’s needs.
- Consider asking around (on DataKind’s Slack, within the partner organization, and in your own network) to find subject matter experts who might know of existing solutions.
- Bring whatever you find back to the Project Champion, and see if they are familiar with these related projects. Check that they are able to differentiate satisfactorily or are willing to apply a past project to their work.
If you do find a transferable solution, this does not mean that you should not do the project! It is possible that customizing the existing solution to fit the partner organization’s data and situation would still be a valuable project requiring DataKind’s support. This is a judgment call you’ll have to make based on the partner organization’s capacity and how complex adopting the existing solution will be.
Contributer(s): Daniel Nissani
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