Last week during my presentation of Open Source is Not a Business Model at the ISV Forum I was running through some observations about community engagement best practices for traditional vendors when Stephen Walli asked me whether we thought a community manager should report to engineering or business executives.

As Stephen notes I side-stepped the question somewhat, noting that it depended how far along the five step community engagement process a company is, although I thought that ultimately the answer was that a community manager should report to the business.

In his post Stephen outlines why he believes “there is exactly one right answer: Engineering” (Although I should note that the choice offered in his blog is between engineering and marketing, in response to which I would agree with him).

My reasons for opting for a business report were based on the issues addressed in this chart:

(Based on a graphic used by The Eclipse Foundation and research done by Carleton University and Nortel. For more see this post).

If a company does not enjoy the full benefits of open source engagement until it has take company-wide, business-driven approach to open source rather than a project-by-project, engineering-led approach to open source, then I would argue that ultimately the person responsible for liaising between the vendor and its communities ought to report into a business executive, such as the COO, or equivalent.

Until a company gets to that stage in the engagement process, In would agree that it makes more sense for the “community manager” to report to engineering in the individual product group for all the reasons Stephen writes about (arguably we’re actually talking about different job roles here).

As a side note, Dave Neary claimed during OSBC that “if a company feels the need to hire a community manager then that is an admission of failure”, which appeared to run contrary to other advice we’re seeing, until he pointed out that company’s can’t manage the community and shouldn’t try.

As he explained (also in response to Stephe’s post) “A community manager should enable the community and remove roadblocks to make sure the relationship [with the vendor] is as frictionless as possible. There is a role for that but community manager is not a good title for it”.

So whatever you call it, IMO the role is an engineering function while the company is taking an engineering-led approach to community. As soon as it takes a business-led approach the role ought to become an operational function.