{"id":75912,"date":"2021-07-27T11:55:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-27T15:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/netmind.bts.com\/en\/?p=75912"},"modified":"2025-02-24T17:26:37","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T16:26:37","slug":"communities-of-practice-the-differentiator-for-collaborative-knowledge-en","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/netmind.net\/en\/knowledge-center\/communities-of-practice-the-differentiator-for-collaborative-knowledge-en\/","title":{"rendered":"Communities of Practice: The Differentiator for Collaborative Knowledge-EN"},"content":{"rendered":"

As organizations have evolved and learned that it is ok, and even expected, for people to make mistakes. The faster mistakes are made and corrected, the faster to market with a working solution. However, people need to learn from these mistakes \u2013 people beyond the product team, so that all can avoid a similar future mistake. The good news is that technological advancement has opened the door and driven collaborative platforms that facilitate knowledge sharing among peers. Yet turning a group of people into a community<\/em> takes some extra effort.<\/p>\n

Learning involves many ingredients in varying amounts such as theoretical knowledge, experiments and tests, our own experience, and the ability to access the knowledge of others. The traditional learning models are still in practice but have changed in their form and scope.<\/p>\n

In this article, I want to share what makes a Community of Practice (CoP)<\/strong>, what they can contribute, how they can help organizations, how to organize them to achieve their maximum potential, and what value they can bring as a means of fostering and disseminating knowledge.<\/p>\n

What is a Community of Practice?
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Communities of Practice\u00a0are an evolution of models we already know, but with an orientation and scope that make them a powerful tool for acquiring and developing\u00a0knowledge and skills. A\u00a0Community of Practice is an organized group of people who meet regularity around areas of common knowledge and interest.<\/p>\n

At these meetings, members share their\u00a0experiences, best practices, and knowledge\u00a0for the benefit of the community.\u00a0The rest of the rules of operation, objectives, mechanics, work methods, ways of sharing knowledge, or the community\u2019s own organization are only aids to achieve its objective.\u00a0The ideal way to reach it is through what the community members themselves define, although they can also be directed, to a greater or lesser extent, by the host (an organization, for example).<\/p>\n

This type of organized group has always existed, generally supported by very informal mechanisms.\u00a0They have allowed us to\u00a0contrast our own experience\u00a0with the experiences of other people in the same domain of knowledge or activity.<\/p>\n

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Formally, a Community of Practice assumes that the people who participate in them are highly knowledgeable and skilled in the domain in question (surgeons, plumbers, Java programmers, property registrars, embroidery enthusiasts, etc.). There are other types of communities, those of interest, which include people who want to learn and acquire knowledge in a new domain. However, when we talk about Communities of Practice today, especially in business organizations, we are talking about a model that includes experts and learners: all the people in an organization who are interested in a given activity or knowledge area.<\/p>\n

How can a Community of Practice contribute to an organization?<\/h2>\n

A Community of Practice can serve any purpose. While they were first formalized in the\u00a0field of technology\u00a0(a study on Xerox equipment repairers), the term has more recently become popularized within agile ways of working and organizing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In fact,\u00a0Spotify has popularized<\/a> a cultural model comprised of squads, tribes, chapters, and guilds. Guilds are lightweight communities of interest that cut across the organization and bring people together to share knowledge and experiences about a specific area.\u00a0SAFe<\/a>, or Scaled Agile Framework,\u00a0also incorporates Communities of Practice into its definition of an organization.\u00a0Communities are a common element in agile organizations, although they can be established and applied in any other area.<\/p>\n

From an\u00a0agile perspective, Communities of Practice are groups of autonomous, self-organized people who work as a team for a\u00a0common goal: to enriching the community itself with the contributions of others.\u00a0They are a means to break silos, one of the ways to move towards agile organizations.<\/p>\n

Also, the self-management and self-organization aspect of agile is very relevant to CoPs. Nothing prevents a company from promoting and directing its own Communities of Practice from above, but we also know that nothing is more effective than an initiative that emanates and is encouraged directly from the people who promote it<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How can an organization organize a Community of Practice?<\/h2>\n

A community raised and managed by the organization will find it more difficult to attract and promote collaboration between people. It will also take more effort to encourage and keep it alive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Obviously, incentives (both positive and negative) can be brought into play, but in an activity of this type, encouraging them to grow from grassroots will help the communities to be more dynamic, active, and useful to everyone\u2026 both for their members and for the whole of the organization.<\/p>\n

The best thing an organization can do is to facilitate the\u00a0creation of communities.\u00a0When there is real interest, communities end up existing in one way or another, sometimes even outside the walls of the organization.\u00a0Encouraging its emergence and ease of operation will create a flow of knowledge within the company that will enrich it.<\/p>\n

What kinds of actions can a company take to foster communities of practice?<\/p>\n