Contributors areas for impact measurement

Areas that can measured to identify what impact has been generated by a contributor

Impact can be generated through the contribution efforts that people make for an ecosystem. Some quantitative and qualitative examples help to highlight some of the ways that a contributor's efforts and outputs could be measured to understand the amount of impact they have helped to generate.

Quantitative

• Code contributions - Number of developer tools, protocols, architecture changes and libraries created or supported and downloaded or usage metrics for any code repositories they have contributed to.

• Community engagement - Total amount of community following and engagement, amount of content shared, growth of engagement metrics and retention rates.

• Documentation - Number of contributions made to documentation sources, total views and user time spent reading documentation and any ratings about documentation quality.

• Product & design - Designs contributions (logos, wireframes, high fidelity images, infographics etc), product improvements made and user experience suggestions or changes made.

• Mentorship & support - Total time spent supporting and educating other contributors or community members and amount of educational resources and content created and viewed by community members.

• Strategic thinking - Number of suggestions made and conversion rates of any suggestions made that get adopted.

• Research & analysis - Number of novel findings and innovations produced and number of findings that get adopted and integrated into the ecosystem.

• Cultural contributions - Time spent participating and improving community discussions and events.

• Governance participation - Total participation in governance decisions and amount of time spent advocating and discussing parameter and policy changes.

Qualitative

• Quality of contribution outcomes - The quality of outcomes generated by a contributor can be analysed and then compared with other contribution efforts to better determine how impactful their contribution outcomes have been and how well their time has been allocated for supporting and improving the ecosystem.

• Cultural & social impact - Community sentiment about the impact made by any contribution outcomes, contributions made towards improving ecosystem inclusivity and diversity and feedback given from recently joined community members.

• Morals & ethics - Quality and depth of contributions towards improving inclusivity and diversity of opinion, participation across the ecosystem showing leadership or any contributions that help to support different important issues such as environmental, social and ethical issues.

• Mentorship & support - Community feedback about the quality of mentorship and support provided.

• Governance & policy influence - Depth and thought demonstrated during governance decisions and amount of effort demonstrated that positively influenced those decision processes.

• Leadership, vision & strategic thinking - Evidence of thought leadership from the depth and diversity of ideas being suggested, demonstrations of impactful vision planning and ability to embrace and foster collaborative efforts that gather and share the different opinions and preferences about how to address different important ecosystem goals.

• Creativity & innovation - Uniqueness and creativity of any contributions made and analysis that demonstrates the potential importance and impact of novel innovations and research findings.

• Relationships & communication - Examples of community relationship building efforts that helped to improve team synergies and collaborative efforts, evidence of effective communication skills when sharing important information and evidence of ability to professionally handle conflicts and prevent the need for mediation efforts.