Bottom Up Change Tool

Community of Practice

A Community of Practice (CoP) is a special type of informal network that emerges from a desire to work more effectively or to understand work more deeply among members of a particular specialty or work group.

At the simplest level, CoPs are small groups of people who've worked together over a period of time and through extensive communication have developed a common sense of purpose and a desire to share work-related knowledge and experience.

Typically such groups do not overlap with formally-assigned teams or task forces. Because they grow out of social contacts or efforts to meet job requirements (especially those not anticipated and supported by the formal organization and formal training mechanisms), a COP is typically not an authorized group nor a role identified on an organization chart.

In fact they can work at cross-purposes to the organization's leaders intent. A person's responsibilities to the communities of which they are a member sometimes conflict with each other, and with the rules and interests of the organisation that employs them.

People in CoPs may perform the same job (technical representatives) or collaborate on a shared task (project workers) or work together on a service development (housing managers, environmental health officers and training specialists). They are colleagues, bound together by their common responsibility to get "real work" done. There are typically many communities of practice within an organisation, and people can belong to more than one.

CoPs are typically small groups of specialists that learn together. They just emerge naturally: three, four, 20, maybe 30 people find themselves drawn to one another by a force that's both social and professional. They collaborate directly, use one another as sounding boards and teach each other.

CoP Overviewxxxxxx CoP Start Up Kit