In The Trenches

 

Some key plays for building a good community. All of which take place in the trenches.

1. Launch and learn – each team  member must needs contact with users
2. Understand the importance of sharing learnings directly to the developers (better yet, let them hear it from users)
3. User involvement in the development process never stops, never ends (especially as more and more web products are developed)
4. Community is a great place to test new product development processes
5. Change is never constant, it is always happening
6. It is great to collaborate with your heavy users and most valuable customers, but don’t leave out other users, especially since you need to develop to the lowest common denominator, the less experienced and knowledgeable users
7. Verbatims are just as important as ‘numbers and scores’ (Yes, everyone on the team should read them!)
8. Find a users problem and solve it well!
9. Make sure to do a post mortem after your failures and learn from them.
10. Solutions are not always transferable from one product/service to another. (you can not plug in a previous approach to ratings to this group of users

And remember: This all sounds easier than it is. It takes hard work and constant effort.

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