Create Communities Of Practice To Scale Experimentation Faster

“ If you can develop peer-to-peer communities, and teach one another, it’s a more scalable approach to improving overall decision quality than having a centralised experimentation authority. Developing communities of practice can increase and accelerate your organisational performance with experimentation ”

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Introduction

Communities of practice are groups of people (product, design, engineering, data science) who, sharing a common problem or passion (experimentation), come together to explore challenges, ideas and share and grow their practice.

The term “communities of practice” is relatively new, however, is an age-old and well-practiced concept. More recently, Communities of Practice (CoP) have been popularised by researchers Etienne and Beverley Wenger-Trayner.

Through their research in different communities, such as American Indian Yucatec midwives, and the Vai and Gola tailors from West Africa, they concluded that learning did *not* primarily occur with the transmission of facts in the master/apprentice relationship.

Rather, learning was best facilitated within a community of apprentices and more experienced workers. In this environment, learning was continuous and sustained, occurring more regularly in an organic, supportive, and localised manner.

There are many parallels with how artisans and experts transfer skills, and how fast-scaling experimentation occurs in an organisation.

If you can develop peer-to-peer communities, and teach one another, it’s a more scalable approach to improving overall decision quality than having a centralised experimentation authority.

Developing CoP’s can increase and accelerate your organisational performance with experimentation.

In this article we discuss:

What is a Community of Practice?
The three elements of a Community of Practice
What does a Community of Practice look like?
How is a Community of Practice structured?
How are Vistaprint using Communities of Practice to scale experimentation faster?
How is a Community of Practice different?
Benefits of establishing a Community of Practice
Seven design principles for creating a Community of Practice

1. What is a Community of Practice?

CoP’s are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain - a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems or surgeons exploring new methods.

CoP’s are groups of peers who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

Research suggests that learning is the main reason CoP’s are established. Social learning and thinking together are key concepts in CoP’s.

Learning may be intentional, or incidental based on peer-to-peer interactions.

The collaborative learning process of ‘thinking together’ is one of the most meaningful elements of a CoP and what makes it work.

Thinking together is conceptualised as people share knowledge and mutually guide each other through their understandings of the same problems in their area of shared interest.

2. The three elements of a Community of Practice

Three key elements are required for a Community of Practice to exist:

Domain: a shared area of interest
Community: members interact and learn together
Practice: members are practitioners who develop a shared repertoire of resources

1. Domain

A CoP is not a club of friends or a network of connections. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest.

Membership implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people.

For example, a youth gang may have developed all sorts of ways of dealing with their domain – surviving on the street and maintaining some kind of identity they can live with.

They value their collective competence and learn from each other, even though few people outside the gang may value or recognise their expertise.

2. Community

In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information.

They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other; they care about their standing with each other.

A website is not a community of practice. Having the same job or the same title does not make for a community of practice unless members interact and learn together.

Vintage car collectors in a certain country may have much in common, yet unless they interact and learn together, they do not form a community of practice.

Members of a CoP don’t always need to work with one another daily.

3. Practice

A CoP is more than a group of people who share a common interest (I.e., a love of Rom-Com movies)

Members of a CoP are practitioners.

They develop and share knowledge and resources – experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction.

A random, chance conversation with a stranger on your morning commute may reveal some interesting discussion, but it does not make itself a CoP.

The development of a shared practice (experimentation) is conscious.

3. What does a Community of Practice look like?

CoP’s may be represented in many different forms in an organisation – graduate network, product or technology groups, lunch and learn forums etc.

The CoP may be small, large, or extend across the entire organisation. CoP’s are not limited to local, face-to-face meetings and may extend online, across the globe.

The CoP can occur within an organisation, or include various organisations. They may be informal, or formally funded.

CoP’s are everywhere. So common, that we may not even realise that we’re participating in a CoP.

In fact, we’ve all belonged to CoP’s at some stage – work, school, sports, and hobbies. We ebb and flow in and out of many CoP’s over the course of our life.

Communities of Practice are usually characterised by the following aspects:

Enable practitioners to take collective responsibility for managing the knowledge they need
Create a direct link between learning and performance
Address the dynamic and explicit aspects of knowledge creation and sharing
Innovate and solve problems - invent new practices, create new knowledge
Enable development of a collective and strategic voice
Are not limited by formal structures – they create connections among people across team, business unit, organisational and geographic boundaries

The key characteristic of a CoP is the blending of individual and collective learning through the development of a shared practice. CoPs are where effective ‘Social Learning’ occurs.

CoP’s develop their practice through a variety of examples. Here are some common scenarios:

*Adapted from Wenger, McDermott & Snyder (2002)*

4. How is a Community of Practice structured?

Establishing a Community of Practice

The basic structure of a Community of Practice involves three levels of participation:

Convenor – coordinators, moderators, facilitators, leaders, or experts
Core members – active participants
Peripheral participants – receive and share information from the group

*Structure of a Mature Community of Practice - Levels of Participation* *(Wenger-Trayner, 2002)*

(A). Core group: the ‘engine room’ of the CoP, includes a convenor or shared convenor role. These people energise and nurture the community

(B). Active participants: members who are recognised as practitioners and engage often but without the regularity or intensity of the inner group.

(C). Occasional participants: members who only participate when they have something specific to contribute, or when they are involved in a project related to the domain of the CoP.

(D). Peripheral participants: people who have a sustained connection to the CoP, but with less engagement, likely to only receive information rather than contribute.

(E). Transactional participants: outsiders who interact with the CoP occasionally without being members themselves, ‘intellectual neighbours’, or receivers of the good or service the CoP is discussing, or to gain access to resources produced by the CoP, or funders.

People will naturally move in and out of these categories over the life of a community. It is natural for a Community of Practice to be represented as a layer-state.

Interactions and knowledge flows between these layers create many opportunities for learning and are a sign of community health. Different types of participants in a community of practice have different perspectives, needs, and ambitions.

Serving the community is dynamic, and a key part of cultivating communities and networks. People should be able to move between layers and levels. For instance, participants in the peripheral layers should also be actively involved in running the community. It is a red flag if “new blood” is not being developed within the Core Group and Active Members.

5. How are Vistaprint using Communities of Practice to scale experimentation faster?

Building a strong culture of experimentation at Vistaprint was key for the business to be able to continue to deliver outstanding value to customers.

Vistaprint Director of Experimentation Lukas Vermeer suggests, “the experimentation hub is central to our strategy, but it alone is not sufficient to scale experimentation across our organisation”.

Vermeer goes further to suggest, “we aim to ensure that teams have easy access to the required skillsets and tools by clearly defining their boundaries and supporting escalation paths. We strive for Freedom Within a Framework (FWF): empowering teams to operate autonomously (e.g., without decision-making or approval loops) in service to their objectives”.

LEVEL 1 – EXPERIMENTATION HUB

The first level are the experimentation experts – Experimentation Centre of Excellence and Experimentation Product Management. This is the inner circle. These people are the experts that are dedicated and committed to developing and growing experimentation strategy and vision within the organisation.

(A). Experimentation Centre of Excellence:

Are responsible for experimentation process and analysis frameworks. This includes collecting, documenting, evangelising, and teaching best practices, was well as building data products.

They organise and facilitate the Ambassador Program, also proving second-line consulting expertise to the ambassadors. Collaborate closely with the Experimentation Product Development Team to reduce friction in experimentation processes, frameworks, and tools.

(B). Experimentation Product Development:

This group have the skills related to the development and deployment of technology and tools used to manage and execute experiments and collate results.

This may include the development of software libraries, development and maintenance of the data processing pipelines for experimentation data, and development of the internal user-facing platforms and tools used to manage, execute, review and document experiments.

This Experimentation Product Development team will also provide technical support in cases where the Experimentation Centre of Excellence lacks the technical depth of knowledge required.

Support to business Platform teams for experimentation is also provided by this group.

LEVEL 2 – DOMAIN OWNERS & EXPERIMENTATION AMBASSADORS

The next level are the experimentation Ambassadors. These people are decentralised in the cross-functional teams that are performing the experiments.

These people are highly passionate and possess the necessary skills and knowledge about the experimentation domain – how experiments are prioritised, designed, coordinated, executed, and evaluated in the specific domain (I.e., Marketing)

Experimentation Ambassadors are the first line of support for any experiments within their domain.

Key responsibilities include:

Acting as a facilitator giving end-to-end guidance and support for experiments in their domain; supporting the testing agenda and test coordination within their domain
Encouraging best practices
Supporting the education of experimenters around them
Facilitating peer-review
Granting domain users access to experimentation tools
Measuring and reporting on domain testing program to their leadership

As the CoP matures and becomes more formal, this group will take on much of the day-to-day leadership responsibility for experimentation in the organisation.

These members attend meetings, participate in business forums, provide project support, conduct knowledge transfer within their business units and develop experimentation resources.

It’s important that this group establish open and transparent lines of communication with the outer circles.

LEVEL 3 – THE EXPERIMENTERS

The outer circle is where most of the CoP participants reside.

This group of people are represented in the business units, teams, tribes, or customer journeys. The experimenters report to the Domain Experts and are supported by the Ambassadors.

These are the people who are designing and executing experiments day-to-day. They are responsible for experimentation prioritisation, execution, analysis, and business decision-making.

This is where much of the peer-to-peer learning and knowledge transfer is occurring. The experimenters will have weaker or tangential connections to the level one experts.

6. How are Communities of Practice different?

Networks

A CoP includes networks. This network refers to the set of relationships, personal interactions, and connections among members and participants.

The job of the network aspect is to optimise the connectivity among the group.

It aims to increase the extent and density of the network by strengthening existing connections, enabling new connections, and ensuring responsiveness between people.

The work of a Community of Practice is broader than a network as it develops the learning partnership that creates a shared identity around a common agenda or area for learning.

People join a CoP to do more than ‘network’. Becoming part of a CoP is more about what the members can learn from each other, and what they can achieve by learning together.

It is to develop a collective sense of trust and commitment.

Teams

A team is held together by a task. When the task is completed, the team often dissolves.

Although team members are likely to learn something in the performance of that task, this learning does not define the team.

The basis of trust and cohesion among the team comes from their respective commitment and contributions to the task.

*How Communities of Practice Are Different (Wenger-Trayner, 2011)*

A community of practice is united by the learning value members find in their interactions.

They may perform tasks together, but these tasks do not define the community. It is the ongoing learning that sustains their mutual commitment.

Members come from different organisations and perspectives, and it is their engagement as individual learners that is the most significant aspect of their participation.

Trust within a CoP develops based on members’ abilities to learn together: to care about the domain, to respect each other as practitioners, to be candid with their questions and challenges, and to provide responses that reflect practical experience.

7. Benefits of establishing a Community of Practice

The primary benefits of a Community of Practice are to the individual practitioner largely by increasing their job efficacy, which in turn, has immense value to the organisation that the practitioner is employed by.

The learning value of a CoP stems from the groups collective intention and commitment to advance learning within the domain.

Over time, the shared history of learning also becomes a resource among the participants in the form of a shared repertoire of cases, techniques, tools, stories, concepts, and perspectives.

It is possible to measure impact and value of a Community of Practice. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, information surrounding the change in members practice and knowledge base can be collected. Please see below for detailed benefits.

8. Seven design principles for creating a Community of Practice

Research by Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002) has identified seven design principles for creating a successful CoP:

Design for evolution
Open internal and external perspectives
Invite different levels of participation
Develop public and private community spaces
Focus on value
Combine familiarity and excitement
Create a rhythm for the community

1. Design for evolution

The purpose of CoP design is not to impose a structure but to help the CoP develop. This may involve starting with a very simple format of fortnightly or monthly meetings for example.

Meetings may start out as an informal group discussion with a loose agenda.

The initial objective is to encourage people to participate in the CoP.

Once people are engaged in the domain and start to build relationships, core members can start to introduce other elements (E.g., information repository, tools, processes and practices)

2. Open internal and external perspectives

Only an insider can appreciate the issues at the heart of the domain, the knowledge that is important to share, the challenges their field faces, and the latent potential in emerging ideas and techniques.

Only an insider can know who the real players are and their relationships.

Good CoP design brings information from outside the CoP into the dialogue about what the CoP could achieve.

This may mean bringing an ‘outsider’ into a dialogue with the CoP leader and core members as they design the community.

As a result of this dialogue, the people who understand the domain issues and have legitimacy within the CoP are also able to see new possibilities and can effectively act as agents of change.

3. Invite different levels of participation

As previously suggested, there tends to be three main levels of CoP participation, however, there can be four or five participation levels. CoP members move through these levels.

The key to good participation and a healthy degree of movement between levels is to design activities that allow participants at all levels to feel like full members.

Rather than force participation, successful CoP’s engage those on the sidelines where there are opportunities for interaction and connection for peripheral members.

4. Develop public and private community spaces

Most CoPs have public events where members gather, either face-to-face or online, however CoPs are much more than a calendar of events.

The essence of a CoP is the web of relationships among members, and much of the communication occurs in one-on-one exchanges.

A common mistake in CoP design is to focus too much on public events.

Experimentation ambassadors need to ‘work’ the private space between meetings, catching up with peripheral members to discuss their projects, technical problems, issues, and challenges, linking them with helpful resources, inside or outside the CoP.

These informal, ‘back channel’ discussions help orchestrate the public space and are key to successful group meetings.

5. Focus on value

Early value mostly comes from focusing on the current problems and needs of CoP members.

As the community grows, developing a systematic body of knowledge that can be easily accessed becomes more important.

A key element of designing for value is to encourage members to be explicit about the value of the CoP throughout its lifetime.

‘Community of Practice Value’ as a standing agenda item on all meetings is useful.

Asking for quantifiable points can add clarity, for example ‘applying a new technique learned from another member’ or ‘knowing who to contact when there is a specific problem’.

6. Combine familiarity and excitement

A CoP becomes a place where people have the freedom to ask for candid advice, share their opinions, and try their half-baked ideas without repercussion.

Divergent thinking is encouraged.

They are places people can drop by to hear about the latest tool, exchange technical gossip, or just chat about technical issues without fear of committing to action plans.

Communities of practice are ‘neutral places,’ separate from the everyday work pressures of people's jobs in that members can offer advice on a project with no risk of getting entangled in it; they can listen to advice with no obligation to take it.

Routine activities provide the stability for relationship-building connections; exciting activities such as a project or event provide a sense of common adventure.

7. Create a rhythm for the community

The tempo of member interactions is greatly influenced by the rhythm of CoP events.

Regular meetings, teleconferences, website activity, and informal lunches ebb and flow along with the heartbeat of the community.

When that beat is strong and rhythmic, the community has a sense of movement and liveliness.

If the beat is too fast, the community feels breathless; people stop participating because they are overwhelmed.

When the beat is too slow, the community feels sluggish.

In summary

Communities of Practice are an age-old concept where groups of people come together to bond around a common domain, exploring ideas and challenges to grow their practice. Communities of Practice are often evident within groups of apprentices and expert workers (I.e., Tailors, Artists, Scientists)

There are many parallels with how apprentices and experts transfer skills, and how fast-scaling experimentation occurs in an organisation.

The benefit of successful communities of practice is that members can transfer knowledge and solve problems much faster than through traditional, hierarchical organisational structures.

If experimenters can teach one another, it’s a more scalable approach to growing experimentation in an organisation, than a small group of experimentation experts trying to teach everyone.

A vibrant and flourishing experimentation community of practice can accelerate your organisational performance with experimentation, faster.