Life cycle
A grouplet may spin up or down depending on an organization’s need to address issues and/or develop capabilities. This is a high-level description of how grouplets are formed, how they operate, and how they may be paused, dissolved, and reactivated.
Formation
Grouplets may initially be conceived by an ad hoc group of volunteers who take initiative, or by appointment by managers or executives that recognize the need to build a strong community around a specific topic.
While a grouplet should consist mainly of self-selecting volunteers, some grouplets that are formed in response to urgent issues or to comply with legal requirements may require that teams appoint an official liaison to join the grouplet. In return for being held accountable for helping the organization achieve business objectives, such mandated grouplets should receive direct management and executive support, at least in the form of widespread volunteer recruiting and recognition.
Conventions
Within an organization, there may be conventions or processes to guide the formation of grouplets and to facilitate their discovery. For example:
- Inquiry in specific forums such as an Intergrouplet or a dedicated Slack channel to consider the need for a new grouplet—and its viability
- Drafting two-pager, or a charter in some other format
- Establishing goals, possibly in a standard format such as Objectives and Key Results
- A home page and/or a practices guide in a standard location, such as in a wiki or on a Guides site
- A Slack channel with a standard prefix or suffix, such as
g-or-grouplet - Registering metadata in a database, such as the names of leaders, the URL of the home page and other artifacts, etc.
- Participating in an Intergrouplet
Execution
Once the grouplet has established its presence via adhering to the appropriate formation conventions, it can begin to execute on its mission. The Structure chapter suggests a method of lightweight organization that can help orient volunteers and scale the effort very quickly. The Processes and artifacts and Education and advocacy chapters suggest some high-level tools and guidelines to shape the grouplet’s vision and activities.
These chapters should be considered starting points for further exploration, not all encompassing, iron clad rules.
Pausing and dissolving
If a grouplet appears to be inactive—whether due to lost momentum or achieving the mission—it may choose to either pause its activities or dissolve completely. Given sound conventions for formation and discovery, pausing and dissolving may consist of announcing the intention to do so in the appropriate forums, and then doing any follow-up work necessary to preserve historical information and artifacts.
Reactivating
If interest in a grouplet resurges in the future, the artifacts it produced previously—preserved as institutional knowledge via the aforementioned conventions—may prove invaluable to reactivating it successfully. The history of who came before and what they attempted and achieved can provide insight into how best to pick up where the previous incarnation left off, rather than starting from scratch and risk repeating mistakes.