Making project reporting more useful for people and the Alliance: Understanding how STAR can deliver greater value to Alliance users

Between June and July 2026, the Innovation and Business Development (IBD) unit of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT carried out a user research study to better understand how Alliance colleagues access, manage, and report information about projects and organizational achievements. The study explored the challenges staff face when gathering evidence, finding reliable and up-to-date information about ongoing projects, and communicating the results and impact of their work. The research combined an analysis of the Alliance workforce with nine in-depth, semi-structured interviews with colleagues across different roles and areas of work, followed by affinity mapping, persona validation, and the translation of what was heard into concrete product opportunities. A consistent picture emerged: project information is scattered across many disconnected tools, from spreadsheets and shared folders to donor-specific systems, forcing staff to hold everything together through personal memory, while reporting the same information more than once is a constant source of frustration. Participants want to spend less time managing information and more time doing their work. The report presents three validated personas, a set of cross-cutting insights, and a list of concrete opportunities to improve how project information is managed, used, and reported across the Alliance, providing a user-centered foundation for the continued evolution of STAR.