Communities of Practices are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.
There are three characteristics of a community of practice:
- Theme: community members share a common area of interest, expertise and commitment that sets them apart from others. This common area creates a common ground, inspires members to participate, guides their learning, and gives meaning to their actions.
- Community: Members pursue this interest through shared activities, discussions, problem-solving opportunities, information sharing, and relationship building. The concept of community creates the social fabric that enables collective learning. A strong community promotes interaction and encourages a willingness to share ideas.
- Practice: community members are actual practitioners in this area of interest and build a shared repertoire of resources and ideas to take back to their practice. While the field represents the general area of interest of the community, the practice is the specific focus around which the community develops, shares and maintains its core of collective knowledge.
To explore
Information and ideas flow not only along hierarchical levels or in predefined structures. The world today is complex.
This need gives rise to agile regulars’ tables, user groups, community meetings. Outside of our agile community, there are open source projects and older structures like professional associations or clubs of scientists.
More and more companies are also realizing that it is helpful to promote such open structures and are supporting internal and external forums, Scrum Cafes, Open Spaces and a variety of other forms. Structures in which like-minded people can exchange ideas and learn from each other.
- what forms and ideas are there
- where do CoPs exist – publicly and also especially in companies – and how widespread is the idea
- which forces, creativity, energy can be released by CoPs
- what are the direct and indirect benefits of CoPs for participants, companies, others, etc.?
- what dangers are there, what can go wrong or have negative consequences