Finding and using knowledge

Keeping an eye on the usefulness and success of your community will help you gauge how to move forward. It could be it has achieved everything it set out do. If this is the case agree to close the community or decide new directions, communities should evolve to meet the needs of the members. 

There are various ways to measure success: 

• If you compiled a community charter, with review dates and aims, you can use these to measure your progress. 
• Engagement can be measured through noting numbers of members, the number of resources shared, discussion threads etc. 
• Members can, and should, be consulted throughout the review process eg via surveys  
• To help build and develop your community there are a range of community maturity models available, some examples:
  • Emily Webber/Tacit: Community of Practice maturity model
  • Health foundation/Q community: Network maturity matrix
• The Ecocycle Planning liberating structure is a useful facilitation tool for reviewing community objectives: www.liberatingstructures.com/31-ecocycle-planning/

If the community feels, after review, that it has achieved everything that it set out to do and it is not appropriate to evolve the aims toward something new then the community might wish to consider closing. 

When closing a community, it is important to celebrate your successes: 

• Consider how the learning and resources your group generated can be shared with others and archived so that your achievements are not forgotten. 
• Publish a case report or 'Lessons Learned' report which could help other communities learn from the experience. 
• Publication of findings and/or a case study. 
• Maintain good communication with your members, preferably consulting them and providing them with an appropriate closing date.