Chapter 2: Communities of Practice and Their Structural Elements
April 10, 2020
- (24) CoPs take many forms and ‘guises’; they may be invisible and yet embedded within the organization
- Information nature of CoPs makes it hard to identify without being a member
(24-26) Forms of CoPs:
- Small / big
- Long lived / short lived
- Co-located / Distributed
- Homogenous / Heterogenous
- Inside and Across Boundaries:
- Within businesses
- Across business units
- Across organization boundaries
- Spontaneous / Intentional
- Unrecognized / Institutionalized
What domains of fundamental design knowledge before joining the organization vs. domain of design knowledge specific to the organization is expected within the community of practice?
(31) Structural components of CoPs:
- Domain
- Evolves with community and the relevant issues of the time
- Determines the identity of the community
- Becomes shared purpose amongst its community members
- (32) Successful CoPs have a distinct domain:
- “The most successful communities of practice thrive where the goals and needs of an organization intersect with the passions and aspirations of participants”
- (36) Community
- Building sense of trust, belonging, mutual commitment leads to effective CoPs
- Activities/meetings must allow for this to take place; ex. co-created charter
- Homogeneity does not always lead to success
- Diversity can bring greater variety of creative problem solving
- Members must be voluntary
- There’s distributed leadership
- Sense of reciprocity; mutual values
- Creating sense of psychological safety leads to successful CoPs
- Practice
- (38) Shared practice is built on “a baseline of common knowledge”
- Practice is “a set of socially defines ways of doing things in a specific domain”
- (39) Methods of capturing knowledge from past and for the future
How are best practices captures and integrated / passed-on for future use? How do designers determine which best practices to apply?
- Success to practice is when all community members recognize what knowledge is worth codifying/documenting and what’s worth discussing/demonstrating F2F
- (43) Power in CoPs comes from ability to contribute knowledge
- Membership is gained from participation
(42, Table 2-2) Distinctions between CoPs other structures:
- CoPs vs. formal departments
- CoPs vs. operational teams
- CoPs vs. project teams
- CoPs vs. communities of interest
- CoPs vs. informal networks
(44) NOTE: I have to be careful not to confuse CoPs with communities of interest/informal networks. Interest/care about a topic is not a practice until the community proactively contributes to the specific domain practices of the interest.
How would you describe the common characteristics of your most knowledgeable / most skilled designers?
