Community of Practice

1
Community of Practice

• Melanie Barwick, Ph.D., C.Psych.
• Health Systems Scientist
• SickKids, Toronto
• KTE CoP September 25 2008

2
Highlights from the Literature Value

• In the short-term, CoPs benefit the organization
  by
• Facilitating the identification of individuals
  with specific expertise
• Fostering knowledge sharing across organizational
  and geographic boundaries
• Improves the rate if implementation/uptake of
  evidence based practices 1
• Improves the quality of research and practice
• The long-term value to organizations include
• Leveraging strategic plans
• Increased retention of talent
• Increased capacity for knowledge development
• Knowledge based partnerships
• 1 Barwick, Peters, Barwick, Boydell
  (unpublished). (February 26th 2008). Do
  Communities of Practice Support Practice
  Change? Findings from a Pilot Study. 21st Annual
  Research Conference A System of Care for
  Childrens Mental Health Expanding the Research
  Base, Tampa, Florida.

3
Highlights from the Literature Value

• In the short-term, CoPs benefit the individual
• Providing a safe environment for sharing problems
• Reducing learning curves
• Improving topical knowledge
• Foster interaction between junior senior
  practitioners
• Improves the quality of research and practice
• The long-term value to individuals include
• Providing a forum for expanding skills
  expertise
• Networking for staying up-to-date in the field
• Enhanced professional reputation
• Increase marketability and employability
• Strengthens ones professional identify

4
Structural Elements

• CoPs can be small, big, long-lived or short
  lived, colocated or distributed, homogeneous or
  heterogeneous, inside or across boundaries,
  spontaneous or intentional (purposeful),
  unrecognized or endorsed organizationally.
• They all share
• Domain
• Community
• Shared practice

5
Key Organizational Design Factors

• Clarity of purpose and core membership
• Healthy infrastructure
• Leadership
• Organizational culture
• Information systems
• Human resource management
• Community-building process
• Results measurement (metrics)

6
The CoP Model

• A distributed community of practice
• Overcomes barriers of time, geography,
  affiliation, culture
• Can be both virtual (web-based) and situated

7
Readiness for CoP

• Is there top-level sponsorship?
• Is there an existing sense of community within
  the targeted CoP?
• Is there a sense of energy and passion around the
  community?
• Is there a recognized need that the community can
  meet, thus providing value to the members and
  their organizations?
• Is there a significant or critical issue facing
  the community that knowledge sharing can
  positively impact? (This implies that there is
  significant interest or urgency around the issue
  these tend to focus on specific process topics.)
• Are there resources (i.e., money and people) to
  support the community?

8
Roles, Responsibility, Supports

• Roles, responsibilities and supports also need to
  be articulated and put in place at the front end.
  
• A support team is needed to provide the
  operational infrastructure, procedural
  guidelines, technical support, user support, and
  community support for the community.
• The support team provides training, deployment,
  and startup functions, as well as process and
  infrastructure support for communities.

9
14-Step Model

• Initial concept formation
• Core planning meeting
• Draft community charter
• Establish community structure
• Inventory of knowledge assets
• Organize the content within the community
• Identify and develop new content
• Identify content editors
• Train content editors
• Manage the content
• Facilitate interaction among members
• Market the community
• Keep content current and relevant
• Determine the effectiveness of the community
• Defense Acquisition University (2005). Community
  of Practice Implementation Guide.

10
Sample Charter Template1

• Community Name
• (Identify the name of the Community, i.e., Cancer
  Prevention CoP.)
• Community Membership/Audience
• (Identify the audiences / stakeholders that the
  community is targeting or is trying to attract,
  i.e., narrow down the list)
• Community Purpose/Intent
• (Identify the purpose/intent of the community,
  i.e., the community is focused on documenting,
  sharing, and transferring best practices in
  cancer prevention.)
• Type of Community or Knowledge Area
• (Identify the type of virtual space that best
  supports the communitys purpose)
• Community Objectives
• (Identify the community objectives, i.e., the
  specific areas/issues that the community is
  interested in addressing.)
• Community Roles (Identify by name the
  individuals who are filling roles.)
• Sponsor __________________________
• Leader __________________________
• Content Editor __________________________
• Critical Business Issues (Identify the critical
  business issues faced by the community.)
• Resources (Identify the resources required to
  support the community, i.e., the organic
  resources that are available, the contractor
  support that is required, any performance
  engineered content that needs to be developed.)
• Measures of Success (List measures of success as
  determined by the community during the Workshop.)
  
• 1 Adapted from DAU 2005.

11
Activity Metrics

• Activity Metrics (Quantitative)
• Website Page Views
• New Website Accounts
• New Topics
• New Knowledge Objects
• New Discussion Forums
• Member Logins
• Community Page Views
• Number of Times Knowledge Object is Viewed
• Most Viewed Knowledge Objects
• Membership growth trends
• Contribution growth trends
• How often users interact (face-to-face meetings,
  virtual discussions, etc.).

12
Performance Metrics

• Performance Metrics (Qualitative)
• Performance metrics indicate the value of the web
  tool to community members
• Usability
• Unsolicited, through on-line CoP feedback tools
• Testimonials and other user feedback (e.g.,
  examples of specific mistakes or problems that
  were avoided or solved, time saved, etc.)
• Unsolicited, through CoP feedback tools
• Solicited, through various mechanisms
• Emails targeted at specific communities of the
  workforce
• Conference surveys
• Phone calls
• In-person meetings
• Written forms
• Interviews
• Workshops
• Group meetings
• Focus groups of users (i.e., ask the users how
  the community has helped them).
• Community of Practice Early Progress Checklist
• Story Telling (e.g., anecdotes, insights, lessons
  learned, and actions).

13
Community of Practice Early Progress Checklist

• Does the community have a common purpose? Is the
  purpose compelling to leadership, prospective
  members, and their functional managers?
• Is the common purpose aligned with sponsor and
  organizational strategies?
• Is the right sponsorship in place, i.e., a
  respected leader who is willing to contribute to
  the community?
• Does the Functional Sponsor(s) agree with the
  communitys scope, purpose, and membership?
• Are Core Group Members and the Community Leader
  enthusiastic, content experts, and able to
  develop the community?
• Do members Functional Managers agree that time
  away from the job is valuable?
• Does the community have the right content experts
  to provide perspective and meaning to its
  membership?
• Does the community have enough members to stay
  alive?
• Are collaborative tools in place and easily
  accessible? Are members willing and able to use
  them?
• Are needed resources available, e.g., meeting
  rooms, participation in conferences, travel
  dollars, conference fees, etc.?

14
Metrics

• Performance Metrics Examples
• Satisfaction of specific knowledge goals
• Reduction in hours needed to solve problems
• Reduction in planned or actual schedule hours
• Reduction in learning time
• Reduction in rework
• Improvement in speed of response
• Increase in innovative and breakthrough ideas
• Increase in reach to customer
• Reduction in cost to support collaborative
  workspaces
• Transfer of best practices (tacit knowledge) from
  one member to another
• Adoption of best practices or innovations that
  were not invented here
• Reduction in redundancy of effort among members
• Avoidance of costly mistakes
• Reduction of specific cost due to superior
  knowledge resources or shared knowledge
• Increase in the productivity of knowledge
  workers
• Improvement in the quality of decision making
• Increase in user satisfaction with the ability to
  access knowledge.

15

Engagement

• Jakob Neilson, describes the ratio of on-line
  participation as a 90-9-1 rule
• 90 of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe,
  but don't contribute).
• 9 of users contribute from time to time, but
  other priorities dominate their time.
• 1 of users participate a lot and account for
  most contributions it can seem as if they don't
  have lives because they often post just minutes
  after whatever event they're commenting on
  occurs.
• Wikipedia contribution and general Internet
  participation complies roughly with this rule.
  This breakdown does seem to be congruent with our
  observations regarding on-line communities.
• http//howardlenos.blogspot.com/2008/06/90-9-1-rul
  e.html

16
Engagement

• Re-label the participants
• Call the 1 "Knowledge Champions - people who
  excel at sharing knowledge.
• Call the 9 "Knowledge Agents - people that
  readily connect people to information and are
  proactive in responding and interacting to
  knowledge flow.
• The rest, the 90 we'll label as "Knowledge
  Users - valuable community participants that
  convert explicit information into solutions,
  products and value.

17
Engagement Dunbars Number

• Dunbar's number is the supposed cognitive limit
  to the number of individuals with whom any one
  person can maintain stable social relationships
  the kind of relationships that go with knowing
  who each person is and how each person relates
  socially to every other person.1 Proponents
  assert that group sizes larger than this
  generally require more restricted rules, laws,
  and enforced policies and regulations to maintain
  a stable cohesion.
• No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's
  number, but a commonly cited approximate figure
  is 150.
• Dunbar's number was first proposed by British
  anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who theorized that
  "this limit is a direct function of relative
  neocortex size, and that this in turn limits
  group size ... the limit imposed by neocortical
  processing capacity is simply on the number of
  individuals with whom a stable inter-personal
  relationship can be maintained." On the
  periphery, the number also includes past
  colleagues such as high school friends with whom
  a person would want to reacquaint themselves if
  they met again.2
• 1 Gladwell, Malcolm (2000). The Tipping Point -
  How Little Things Make a Big Difference.
• 2 Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language
  (Paperback) by Robin Dunbar

18
Engagement

• 90-9-1 rule sure holds true across sites
• Beyond Dunbar number, hard to maintain trust.
• Have different strategies for different
  participation levels group sizes
• http//www.socialtext.net/ocu2008/index.cgi?

19
Engagement

• Stimulate community engagement by
• Mapping the social network to identify the
  Knowledge Champions and Knowledge Agents.
• Optimize support and communications structures
  around the Knowledge Champions, they are the
  "collaboration core" of the community.
• Empower the Knowledge Agents by making sure they
  are solidly connected into the community and have
  full visibility and convenient contribution
  mechanisms.
• Finally, provide the Knowledge Users with very
  low-barrier interaction mechanisms that align
  with their working contexts.

20
Metrics

• Measuring for SuccessA successful community
  generally has two hallmarks a high level of
  interaction between the participants, and a
  growing body of valuable content. That's a
  wonderful end-state, but how do we assess the
  current state of collaboration? Here are some
  criteria critical to success
• Discovery - How easy is it for others to see what
  your community is currently doing or intends to
  do?
• Participation - How easy is it for others to
  contribute to the community?
• Promotion - How do you help others connect with
  your community and stay informed?
• Production - How valuable are the contributions
  of the community?
• http//howardlenos.blogspot.com/search/label/Metri
  cs

21

Engagement

• Christopher Allen, The Numbers Behind Trust,
  Online Community Unconference, June 18 2008,
  Mountainview, California
• http//www.socialtext.net/ocu2008/index.cgi?
• Key Takeaways
• 1) 90-9-1 rule sure holds true across sites
  participation inequity.2) Beyond Dunbar number,
  hard to maintain trust.3) Have different
  strategies for different participation levels
  group sizes
• Jakob Neilson, in his article, "Participation
  Inequality, Encouraging More Users to
  Participate", describes the ratio of on-line
  participation as a 90-9-1 rule
• 90 of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe,
  but don't contribute).
• 9 of users contribute from time to time, but
  other priorities dominate their time.
• 1 of users participate a lot and account for
  most contributions it can seem as if they don't
  have lives because they often post just minutes
  after whatever event they're commenting on
  occurs.
• He then goes on to describe how Wikipedia
  contribution and general Internet participation
  complies roughly with this rule. Although not
  mathematically conclusive, this breakdown does
  seem to be congruent with our observations
  regarding on-line communities.
• http//howardlenos.blogspot.com/2008/06/90-9-1-rul
  e.html

22
Engagement

• Re-label the participants
• Call the 1 "Knowledge Champions", people who
  excel at sharing knowledge and evangelizing ideas
  and content.
• Call the 9 "Knowledge Agents", people that
  readily connect people to information and are
  proactive in responding and interacting to
  knowledge flow.
• The rest, the 90 we'll label as "Knowledge
  Users", valuable community participants that
  convert explicit information into solutions,
  products and value.
• Stimulate community engagement by
• Map the social network to identify the Knowledge
  Champions and Knowledge Agents.
• Optimize support and communications structures
  around the Knowledge Champions, they are the
  "collaboration core" of the community.
• Empower the Knowledge Agents by making sure they
  are solidly connected into the community and have
  full visibility and convenient contribution
  mechanisms.
• Finally, provide the Knowledge Users with very
  low-barrier interaction mechanisms that align
  with their working contexts.

23
Metrics

• Measuring for SuccessA successful community
  generally has two hallmarks a high level of
  interaction between the participants, and a
  growing body of valuable content. That's a
  wonderful end-state, but how do we assess the
  current state of collaboration? Here are some
  criteria critical to success
• Discovery - How easy is it for others to see what
  your community is currently doing or intends to
  do?
• Participation - How easy is it for others to
  contribute to the community?
• Promotion - How do you help others connect with
  your community and stay informed?
• Production - How valuable are the contributions
  of the community?
• http//howardlenos.blogspot.com/search/label/Metri
  cs