Creating a Community
How to create sufficient structure for a team, group, community, project... (an initial outline of thoughts shared by Sam Hahn via email).
To create a community, you need:
- a charter
- a place for memory
- a membership or contact list
- Terms & Concepts Glossary
- a rules of engagement
- a way to track action items / objectives
The Charter
The "Place for Memory"
- "Library"
- DKR
- "wiki"
- Group "verbal history "
The Membership or Contact List
- Who's Who
- Fields: Name, Title, Role, Affiliation, Email, Phone, Skype, Blogsite, Annotations, Link to "blog" or "chronolog", When joined team, when left team
- Keep separate: old members
Terms and Concepts Glossary
- Terms that have meaning to the team (even if already defined outside the team)
- Multiple definitions are encouraged - promotes understanding
- Source (definer) of definition - should be tracked per definition
- Notes / Discussion encouraged on each term / concept.
- Link to more detailed treatment encouraged.
The Rule of Engagement
- Confidentiality: How to handle information
- Transparency
- How to do things "Methods & Tools" aka "Practices & Tools"
- How to call / hold meetings
- How to create subgroups / projects / etc.
- How to track stuff
- How to version stuff
- How to record stuff
- How to share stuff
- How to represent the team / group
- How to engage with other groups
- Who's got liability?
- How members join
- How members leave
- How assets / esp. finances are handled
- What personal conduct is expected?
- What are deliverables?
- What is quality?
- What does done mean?
- ...
Objectives / Action items
- How the group decides objectives / milestones
- How the group creates, assigns, tracks, completes, accepts as done, etc. action items
More thoughts:
- Each team member ought have a blog where that member's thoughts or activities can be made visible to others
- This ought be active - as in: regularly updated
- ideally, every time some time is spent on group activities
- Each community usually has the "leadership", as distinct from the "general membership"
- The "leadership" should have its own workspace,
- The general membership should have a workspace not cluttered with the workings of the "leadership group"
- unless this is specifically desired