Communities of practice

Domain. A community of practice focuses on a capability that members identify with and care about. Therefore, the first thing to consider is the area of capability that brings the community together, gives it its identity, and defines the key issues that members address together. The domain of a community can have a very narrow focus, or it can be very broad—depending on how members define what they need to focus on to make progress.

Community. The ability of a community of practice to make progress depends on the composition of the group of people who need to be involved. It also depends on the relationships they develop over time, including trust, support, commitment, and knowing each other’s contexts and areas of expertise.

Practice. The term domain suggests that a community develops a sense of “ownership” of this area of capability: members take responsibility for defining the set of challenges they share and for structuring a learning process to address them. But they do so from the perspective of practitioners. As practitioners, they understand the demands, challenges, and context of their job and their learning is tuned to that. They can learn from each other because they can appreciate the relevance of their individual experience. They can also learn with each other by combining their collective wisdom to understand a challenge or devise an innovative solution.

Over time, when the three aspects are well aligned, a community of practice can make a big difference to members’ ability to accomplish what they want, individually and collectively. The domain provides a common focus, both for members and for external stakeholders; community builds relationships that enable mutual engagement and collective learning; and practice anchors the learning in what people do, both as a source of lived challenges and as a place to try new things.

Information and figure sourced from Communities of Practice within and across organisations: A Guidebook written by Etienne Wenger-Trayner, Beveryly Wenger-Trayner, Phil Reid and Claude Bruderlein