Community Onion: Seeing Beyond the Obvious
Ever been halfway through a piece of work and realised everyone has a different answer to the question: “Who is our customer?”
Leaders are chasing impact, teams want clarity and stakeholders want to be heard. Without a shared view the loudest voice usually wins. That’s when blind spots creep in and when customers get forgotten.
There are many people who use, influence, constrain or are affected by your product or service. Miss one of them and you risk rework or resistance that derails progress.
The Community Onion is one of our favourite ways to make these relationships visible. It helps leaders, teams and stakeholders see who’s really in play and what expectations they bring.
What is a Community Onion?
The Community Onion is an Agile CoLab stakeholder identification RAFT technique. We use it to rapidly identify and prioritise the groups we need to consider when designing our Product/Service solutions. The onion metaphor was deliberately chosen for its visual impact and collaborative creation simplicity. It is deliberately customer centric.
Each layer in the Community Onion asks the question, who belongs in this layer? The 7 layers, referred to as the 7Cs, replace traditional stakeholder identification techniques. Used in conjunction with Story Mapping it also replaces traditional stakeholder analysis techniques.
The super power of this RAFT is the ongoing benefit the 7 layers have during Product Backlog refinement. They support intuitive prioritisation of the features and stories on the Product Roadmap. This is critical when using an iterative and incremental delivery model to forecast an initial Minimum Lovable Product (MLP) and schedule ongoing regular releases.
Customers – The end beneficiaries of the service or product. They’re the reason we exist and the ones whose experience we must make friction-free.
Collaborators – The people inside or outside our organisation who help serve customers, remove friction and protect relationships.
Controllers – Leaders and managers shaping strategy, structure and performance expectations. They want to see results and analytics.
Compliance – The rule makers and watchdogs. External authorities or internal roles ensuring we operate within laws, standards and regulations.
Commentators – Influencers who might support, shape or resist our work. They can accelerate or constrain what gets delivered.
Casualties – Those who lose out as a result of change whether customers, staff or partners. They are easy to overlook but vital to manage with empathy.
Criminals – The disrupters and bad actors. Hackers, fraudsters or anyone seeking to misuse or exploit our solution.
We call this the Community Onion because it highlights that “the customer” isn’t one person. It is a community with multiple layers, each shaping outcomes in different ways. By mapping the layers, teams can see the full ecosystem and involve the right mix in workshops, planning and decision making.
Why We Love It
The Community Onion helps shift the conversation by:
Bringing hidden groups into view and avoiding blind spots
Giving leaders and teams a common language for talking about “the customer”
Balancing trade offs by understanding how choices affect different layers
Building empathy for everyone influenced by change, not just the direct users
Preventing surprises later in delivery (“why weren’t they consulted?”)
Providing a clear visual for who to involve in story mapping, backlog refinement or roadmapping
When We Use It
We reach for the Community Onion RAFT when:
We’re starting a new product or change and need to understand its scope.
We need to agree who the real customers are.
Preparing for a story mapping session and deciding who to invite.
Teams are refining the backlog and deciding whose needs to optimise for.
We are spotting hidden risks such as compliance gaps, overlooked casualties or bad actors.
It’s a simple tool but it consistently shifts teams from narrow to holistic thinking.
How We Do It
We usually run the Community Onion as a fast, interactive workshop, shown as a story map.
Start by brainstorming who’s affected by your product or service.
Place them into the seven layers - Customers, Collaborators, Controllers, Compliance, Commentators, Casualties and Criminals.
Step back and look for overlaps, conflicts or gaps in the layers.
Overlay perspectives by looking for pain points, gains and potential conflicts between groups.
Use the conversation to clarify priorities and who should have a voice in upcoming decisions.
Teams often realise they’ve been missing entire groups of people who matter.
Things to Look Out For
Prioritisation matters - those closer to the centre usually have greater weight, but don’t dismiss the outer layers.
Casualties are easy to miss - unmanaged they can slow or sabotage progress.
Commentators aren’t always negative - their influence can be powerful if engaged well.
Criminals force resilience thinking - misuse cases are just as important as use cases.
Facilitation helps - without it the onion can turn into an org chart exercise rather than a customer discussion.
Keep it alive - community members shift as products evolve. Revisit regularly.
Try It With Your Team
We recommend trying the Community Onion on something familiar before using it on a high stakes initiative. That way you will focus on learning the technique, not the politics.
A great example is your local dairy. Think about the community that engages with your local diary and place them into the seven layers. It is a simple example but it shows how quickly the onion brings a community into view.
Our RAFT Series
✦ The Community Onion is one of our CoLab RAFTs - Rapid Agile Forecasting & Tracking techniques. Practical tools we use every day in our coaching and training to help teams make work visible and performance-focused.
Updated on 16 September 2025
