Contribute/Lifecycle/starting

Starting

Definition

At this stage clients don't have volunteers yet and they are committed in building a community around what they are doing.

Learning Stage

Unconsciously Incompetent

Measure of Success

Documented pathway with people to manage incoming contributors must be built for a partnership in this phase to be considered a success.

Milestones

• Pathway(s) created working with your CBT partner
• Prototype Pathway-Small number ( up to 20) people are actively in pathway, and it can be iterated on.
• Connected to one of a major funnel, Get Involved, Newsletters, What Can I Do for Mozilla?
• Activators have clear understanding of their roles

Resources

• What Makes a Healthy Pathway This wiki page serves as a guide for developing a pathway and collection of best practices from existing Mozilla contribution pathways. A pathway is a living process to be iterated on in every phase of the lifecycle.
• Communities of practice can start with different intents. For instance, an exploratory study by the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC)6 found four different strategic intents for forming communities for professionals on different teams or locations:
  • to help each other solve everyday work problems in their discipline,
  • to develop and disseminate a set of best practices,
  • to develop and steward the tools, insights, and approaches needed by members in field assignments, and
  • to develop highly innovative solutions and ideas.
• Although most communities serve more than one purpose, communities tend to focus on one and adapt the structure, roles, and activities most suited to that intent. Then they fit other activities into the structures. Pathways are a first step in defining contribution opportunities to the intent of the community.
• David Eaves Workshop: Designing for Participation
• David Eaves Workshop: Identifying Contributors
• Taken from: Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge. Note that Kindle offers a first chapter of the book for free. Activators perform a number of key functions across the lifecycle:
  • Identify important issues in their domain.
  • Plan and facilitate community events. This is the most visible aspect of the coordinator role. Informally link community members, crossing boundaries between organizational units and brokering knowledge assets.
  • Foster the development of community members.
  • Manage the boundary between the community and the formal organization, such as teams and other organizational units.
  • Help build the practice—including the knowledge base, lessons learned, best practices, tools and methods, and learning events.
  • Assess the health of the community and evaluate its contribution to members and the organization

Activator role in this stage

• Define Activities for participation and act as content expert for defining and developing the pathway.
• Demonstrate the value of community-- create ways to measure contributions
• Test the pathways prototypes
• Establish trust with fledgling community members by shepherding them through the pathways and establishing clear methods and channels for communication that allow information to flow in both directions.
• Prepare contribution opportunities so they can be connected to a funnel.

CBT Role

• Provides ongoing strategic support in the definition of activities for participation
• Connects activator to ways to start connecting to initial community members with specific skill sets beyond contribution funnels.

Risks

Awaiting your awesome input!

Deliverables / Checklist