My last several posts have been focused on various aspects of community metrics – primarily those derived from the use of a particular tool (mailing lists) used within our communities. While quite fruitful from an analysis perspective, these are not the only metrics we’ve looked at or reported on. In this post, I’ll provide some insights on other metrics we’ve used in case they might be of interest.
Before going on, though, I also wanted to highlight what I’ve found to be an extremely thorough and useful guide covering KPIs for knowledge management from a far more general perspective than just communities – How to Use KPIs in Knowledge Management by Patrick Lambe. I would highly recommend that anyone interested in measuring and evaluating a knowledge management program (or a community of practice initiative specifically) read this document for an excellent overview for a variety of areas. Go ahead… I’ll wait.
OK – Now that you’ve read a very thorough list, I will also direct you to Miguel Cornejo Castro’s blog, who has published on community metrics. I know I’ve seen his paper on this before, but in digging just now I could not seem to come up with a link to it. Hopefully, someone can provide a pointer.
UPDATE: Miguel was kind enough to provide the link to the paper I was recalling in my mention above: The Macuarium Set of CoP Measurements. Thanks, Miguel!
If you can provide pointers to additional papers or writings on metrics, please comment here or on the com-prac list.
With that aside, here are some of the additional metrics we’ve used in the past (when we were reporting regularly on the entire program, it was generally done quarterly to give you an idea of the span we looked at each time we assembled this):
This is my last planned post on community metrics for now. I will likely return to the topic in the future. I hope the posts have been interesting and also have provided food for thought for your own community programs or efforts.