Shit Flow Diagram (SFD): A Resource Book for Practitioners

May 15, 2024

Urban sanitation systems thinking has undergone a significant change—from infrastructure creation as a measure of progress, to service-level improvement, and now to equity and justice in sustainable service delivery.

The Shit Flow Diagram tool unbundled the sanitation service value chain into distinct components with the aim of addressing service-level improvements at the different stages of the sanitation service chain. Identifying where the sanitation sub-systems were faltering and the specific priorities for rectification. It helped as an advocacy tool as well as a capacity development tool for fixing the challenges of both sewered as well as non-sewered sanitation systems.

The SFD Practitioners Resource Book can serve as a useful learning guide for trainers and practitioners, on how to plan and conduct SFD capacity development trainings. The combination of a graphic representation along with a narrative statement of the problem and its potential solution is a unique feature of the SFD tool. The SFD tool and this resource book is also useful for experts and practitioners from sectors other than WASH, where we deal with a range of processes and sub-systems.

The resource book contains both lessons from SFD implementation in India, as well as a set of training content and collaterals, including critical exercises and case studies that were developed and refined in during the practical trainings conducted by CSE in Africa, Asia and India.