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Map key stakeholders and their roles. Create documentation that maps open source works to key stakeholders and their method of participation in the community.
Stakeholder mapping is the process of identifying and visualizing the stakeholders in your open source project. This visual map can help you understand the composition and roles of the community that influences and builds your project.
Your open source community should include internal stakeholders at your company along with external stakeholders. If your company already has a way to define stakeholders, use that to avoid context switching. If not, use whatever makes sense for the people and partners around your open source project.
Exercise: Map key stakeholders and their roles. Create documentation that maps open source works to key stakeholders and their method of participation in the community.
This is a great exercise to do in person using sticky notes, or using a tool like miro.
List all your stakeholders. This could include:
Contributors / potential contributors / ideal contributors. This can be broken out into different types of contributors: documentation writers, help desk, engineers, designers, etc
Current and potential partner organizations
Users / customers / early adopters
Internal stakeholders: executives, product owners, engineering / design
For each stakeholder group, list the role they have (or could have) on your open source product. This could include:
Contributing ideas or feedback
Contributing code / design
Answering support questions
Using the product
Project leadership / decision making
Setting vision
Project management
… and more!
For each stakeholder group, list their interest or motivation in your open source product. Why do they use or contribute to this project? You may not be able to answer this for each group, but complete what you can. This information will help you build a community engagement plan. This could include:
To learn / get mentorship
The impact on sustainable development goals
To contribute to the project mission
To solve a problem they have
It’s free
Do your stakeholders groups interact with each other? If so, draw a line between the groups and label their relationship.
This exercise works best in a more visual format where you can move notes and draw lines to represent connections. If that’s not available, here’s a table template.
Open Source Community Mapping Template
Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons - stakeholder map CC BY-SA 3.0 Wikimedia Foundation
Mapping out stakeholders CC BY-SA 2.0 Kennisland on Flickr
Updated on 16 Apr 2024