Cultivating Communities of Practice (Wenger, McDermott, Snyder)

Chapter 9: Community-based Knowledge Initiatives

May 2, 2020

• Design Principles for a community-based knowledge initiative:
  1. Evolutionary design: let communication evolve naturally and expect iterations
  2. Distributed leadership: shares ownership and welcome of new leadership
  3. Participation across multiple structures: teams across multiple divisions
  4. Dance of formal and informal
  5. Building on existing culture
  6. Pacing the initiative
• Community-based knowledge initiatives are “social movements”
• Phases to developing community-based knowledge initiatives:
  1. Prepare
  2. Launch
  3. Expand
  4. Consolidate
  5. Transform
• Establish a support team that can provide education and awareness
• Culture within the community can shape the culture of the organization over time
• How does your UX team culture shape the culture of the organization? Are they similar? Different?

Overall, chapter 9 covers high level phase of how community-based initiatives can form. The ways to develop are diverse. This shows that CoPs are context dependent.