Product development - http://www.mozilla.com/

Why this example was selected

Mozilla has achieved an unusual Outcome – succeeding against Google, Apple and Microsoft. The organization functions like we have seen – they have involved their community in a diverse set of tasks – from software development to communications. The author believes Mozilla is an organization for others to benchmark against for Mass Collaboration.

Source: observation of the community.

Outcome - 4

The Mozilla Firefox browser competes against offerings from Microsoft, Apple and Google. These companies have numerous advantages and yet Mozilla has been making inroads. It is now the second most popular browser, despite the fact that Microsoft has bundled its browser for years to build market share, Google is visible everywhere and Apple bundles Safari with iTunes.

In short, we think Mozilla is one of the benchmark organizations for mass collaboration, in particular for Firefox and the scores reflect this.

People - 5

Mozilla is about making the internet browser experience better, competing against large publicly traded organizations who seem intent on using browsers to help build their own business. This makes Mozilla a very meaningful cause, for many who understand how the browser can be used to assure the maintenance of open standards while reducing the impact of attempts to include proprietary technologies.

Contribution numbers are non-precise and often misleading, as we have discussed, since participation levels vary. However, to get a sense of scale we looked at the community focused on spreading the word about Firefox – specifically the project that discusses all things related to Firefox. This project has over 13,000 members – Community at SFx - http://www.spreadfirefox.com/og. In 2008 this community was responsible for setting a world record – over 8 million copies of the software were downloaded in 24 hours.

Aside from these helpers, other participants are creating add-ons and themes for the browser. In June 2008 there were over 5000 add-ons and 1000 themes (created by one or more people. And about 150 million add-ons were being used, according to statistics from Mozilla. http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2008/06/29/state-of-the-add-ons-ecosystem/

From these numbers it seems clear that Mozilla is capturing the hearts and minds.

Tools - 4

First, since the team is highly distributed, there are the various communication options, beginning with less formal tools such as Chat, IRC and support forums. Then tasks become a little more structured - there are tools for understanding who is working on what, issues or bugs awaiting resolution as well as a host of documentation on the product, the tools used to create the product and guidelines for testers.

In addition to the open source participation model, Firefox has other ways for people to create and contribute to the product via Add-ons and Themes.

Organization - 4

Mozilla invites participation and there are lots of areas where people are contributing, beyond the traditional areas associated with open source software. For example, there are numerous roles for finding, testing or helping to organize bugs reported or feature requests. But there is also a very active groups spreading the word and organizing others to spread the word about Firefox, for example.

To organize all these people Firefox uses a variety of tools for support and collaboration. And for more formal tasks such as software development, there is bug tracking and code management organizations. And to communicate more broadly with the community, Firefox makes use of their own blogs, as well as frequent updates and conversations with a community of other people interested in Mozilla.

The add-on platform expands the number of ways people can participate in development of the product, while simplifying organization and separating the core development work for the interest of 3^rd parties. Additionally, small communities form around each of these add-ins, reflecting some similar structures such as forums to discuss future developments and also list contributors who do everything from translations to creating icons. In some cases, add-on developers recruit for specific positions such as Beta Testers. These communities are small, but provide some great templates for understanding how you might involve community members in different aspects of creating products.