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A community of practice will go through several stages of development as it moves from concept through development. It is important to understand the stages a project management community of practice can follow to plan goals and events accordingly. When a PM COP is emerging in the organization, the focus should be on growth and promoting a brand around project management learning, networking and collaboration. It is also important to understand when a project management community of practice is waning as additional energy, new ideas and revitalization may be required to reactivate the community of practice.
Stages | Description | Key Activities | Potential | People face similar situations with the benefit of a shared practice | Finding each other and discovering commonalities | Coalescing | Members come together and recognize their potential | Exploring connectedness, defining joint enterprise, negotiating community | Active | Members engage in developing a practice | Engaging in joint activities, creating artifacts, adapting change circumstances, renewing interest commitment and relationships | Dispersed | Members no longer engage very intensely, but the community is still alive as a force and a center of knowledge | Staying in touch, holding reunions, calling for advice. | Memorable | The community is no longer central, but people still remember it as a significant part of their identities | Telling stories, preserving artifacts, collecting memorabilia |
Table 1: Stage of COP Development
During the Potential Stage, the community of practice is just forming and members are sharing similar situations and stories as they learn from each other. The members are just discovering the strengths and weaknesses with each individual and identifying the key resources to help solve project management problems. Similar to the forming and storming phases of team development, the project management community of practice is developing a common vision, establishing goals and emerging as a shared learning resource.
In the Coalescing stage, the community of practice enters the norming phase of team development and recognizes its potential to the organization and the benefits provided with membership. An informal leadership team emerges as the team coordinates and plans different activities and establishes its identity. The group is exploring its identity, developing connections and negotiating its role in the organization. During this stage, other participants may be skeptical of the community of practice and its overall role in the organization. As a learning organization, the community of practice needs to demonstrate its value by providing worthwhile learning activities to the organization.
During the Active stage, the members are actively developing the community of practice and the organization has a cadence and rhythm. Members understand the meeting frequency and the community of practice has an identity with the organization. Members look forward to the various events and refer to the community of practice as a knowledge source for project management knowledge, lessons learned and useful advice.
During this stage, the community of practice will produce project management artifacts such as automated tools, improved templates and tactical approaches to applying project management in the organization. Relationships evolve and the members continually renew their commitment to promoting lessons learned in the organization.
During the Dispersed stage, members don’t engage the community of practice with the same energy as before. The community is still active as a knowledge center but it lacks the impetus it contained in the active stage. Members still keep in contact with one another, hold get-togethers and leverage their relationships to solve project management programs.
Some community of practices will continue to the Memorable stage and others will be re-invigorated with new energy as different membership and new leaders emerge to continue to “carry the torch” for project management learning and improvement. If a community of practice enters the Memorable stage, the organization is no longer a central group of knowledge but people still recall it as a significant part of their organizational identity. Members retain the templates, presentations and ideas created in the community of practice. However, the community of practice is no longer active. Former members refer to it in the past and share stories of worthwhile activities and experiences.
Understanding these stages helps the community of practice understand its relationship to the official organization. Wenger also identified several relationships with the parent organization as defined in the table below:
Relationship | Definition | Challenges | Unrecognized | Invisible to the organization and sometimes even to members themselves | Lack of feedback to improve | Bootlegged | Visible informally to a select circle of people that are “in the know” | Obtaining resources | Legitimized | Officially recognized as a valuable entity | Organizational Scrutiny | Strategic | Widely considered central to the organization’s success | Short-term pressures | Transformative | Able to redefine its environment and the direction of the organization | Relating to the rest of the organization as an informal entity |
Table 2: Relationships to the Official Organization
As the community of practice matures, it value and relationship to the organization changes. Since the organization is constantly changing, the community practice needs to remain flexible. As new leadership directs the larger organization, the focus and support for ancillary project management learning opportunities and networking may not take precedence. The benefit of the community of practice is the low cost and low effort to promote lessons learned in the organization.
Overall, the organization obtains a strong return on investment in the form of inexpensive learning and knowledge sharing without spending a significant amount of money growing and nurturing the community of practice. The next article in the community of practice series will provide several ideas to grow and nurture the project community of practice.
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