Proposing an Architecture for Collaborative Product Development in Self Help Groups

A Self Help Group (SHG) is a group of 10 to 20 people who come together and pool their resources to form a small business. SHGs also evolve into larger organizations through federations. SHGs have been very effective in India. There were several thousands of them spread geographically all over the country. Automation of SHGs will greatly impact the SHGs’ performance in business and in society. SHGs are gaining importance in research studies, and hence formalizing the SHGs is a fundamental initiative for further research. Sometimes SHGs receive tasks which they cannot complete with their existing resources. In such situations, they collaborate with other SHGs who have the required resources. SHGs also collaborate to achieve higher objectives (goals). There is no proposed framework for Self Help Groups, and Collaborations among Self Help Groups. Objective of this study is to provide a formal framework for SHGs and also model a rudimentary framework for collaborations among SHGs. Since the primary functionality of SHGs is to execute tasks, and also tasks are the basic reason for collaborations. So, to develop a framework for collaborations, we first need to formalize a task. We also formalize a member and SHG, and then proceed to develop framework for collaborations among SHGs. This paper proposes a framework for collaborations in SHGs and also proposes a metric of collaboration. A rudimentary framework for collaborations among SHGs is obtained; and it is also observed that, through further research, holistic models can be developed based on this work.