Plan your community
Advice on planning a community of practice: consider the need; build a core team; develop community purpose and aims.
Plan your community
Consider the need
At this stage it is important to ascertain whether your community is needed, who your prospective "core" team might consist of, who your prospective members might be and develop a community charter. It is also important to consider how the organisation of your website or online tool will affect user experiences and participation. Ideally there will already be a group working together to solve problems and share ideas around the topic that can form the basis.
It is important as a first step to identify a clear purpose for your community and assess whether one is actually needed within your domain. This sense of purpose should be shared by all members and will help steer the community overall and ensure its future success and sustainability.
Awareness of the subject area
It is a good idea to become aware of relevant strategic drivers and imperatives in the subject area. This can help you decide if a community is, in fact, needed.
Develop a charter
Developing a charter will help maintain focus, quickly describes your community's purpose and aims and, provides a useful reference for review and evaluation.
Main output or outcome of the community.
- Having an idea of outputs and outcomes provides a framework for your community.
- These can be arrived at through discussion, awareness of current trends and intitiatives within your chosen domain and by consultation with a community's "core" group and members.
Review Dates
- Establishing future review dates early on in the life of a community helps to provide a rough idea of its expected life-span.
- The existence of a charter means that communities can look back to original goals and consider their next steps.