Difference between revisions of "Communities of Practice"

• Learn while doing.
• Ensure effective creating and sharing of knowledge and experience.
• Co-learn about related practices across projects.

A) Main Components

1. Community : active members interested to share their knowledge and have sufficient time to devote to the community.
2. Domain : it must be a a compelling topic that will be of interest to many people in the organization, will be relevant to their work and will build on the core values of the organization. The potential members must be passionate about the subject for collaboration and the domain can itself invite involvement.
3. Practice : to compare his own practice (work) to those the others is one of the foundations of the community.
4. Motivation/engagement : the existence of the community bases only on the motivation of its members.
5. Mission : it could be a means by which the management of the company demonstrates its interest and its involvement in the community.
6. Structure : it is important to find a balance between formal and informal structure. Most of communities have a concentric structure at triple level (core group, closer circle, outside circle). ^[2]

B) Step by Step

1. Creating:
   • Decide what topic you wish to address in a community in order to identify the domain.
   • To encourage people to participate, start a discussion on a domain or a smal problem and raise ideas for resolving this problem.
   • Find a committed leader or coordinator for the community. Volunteer to be the community leader, or identify someone else with the right attributes and well-respected. The community leader should know the subject, have energy for stimulating collaboration, and then regularly spend time increasing membership, lining up speakers, hosting calls and meetings, asking and answering questions, and posting information which is useful to the members.
   • Identify thought leaders to legimate the community and potential members to leverage knowledge. The community will need a critical mass of members. You usually need at least 50 members, with 100 being a better target. Try to take advantage of existing networks.
   • Decide on a initial technology platform and create one or more tools for the community to use (threaded discussion forum, collaborative team space, web site or portal, Wiki, Blog or newsletter).
2. Starting-up:
   • Once your community is established, publicize its existence to help recruit new members (sepcial event, articles, incentive to join).
   • Watch the production of intermediate results, summaries and conclusions of the discussions.
   • Gather a core group (leader, exoerts, stakeholders) and maintain 1 closer circle (involved members) and 1 outside circle (interested members, contributors, readers).
   • Keep the community active : regular conference, periodic events, weekly meetings and collect examples of value.
3. Developing and sustaining
   • Maintain interest and commitment by organizing work-shops and face-to-face meetings on major topics
   • Introduce new and challenging perspectives.
   • Maintain the energy by recruiting new members.
   • Rotate roles and responsibilities between members over time.
   • Manage knowledge by creating knowledge map, processing knowledge sharing , organising resources, identifying knowledge gaps.
4. Closing:
   • Ending the CoP when the domain is less relevant or the purpose ended.
   • Celebrate its life and achievements by organizing a special event.
   • Create a new CoP on a different topic. ^[3]

Job Aid