CoP the Community of Practice is a group of individuals who engage in collective learning of common interest. They agree to come together and share information, built knowledge, solve issues and create expertise. In Agile release train, they provide an experience to knowledgeable members of mastery and create opportunities. Communities have three types of dimension, which are:
Purpose- Area of common interest the community will be discussing. What is expected from the community?
Practice- Shared knowledge, project experiences, and related activities.
Community- Individuals who like the topic to extend that they will follow the schedule of discussions.
Starting the community
While starting a community it's not necessary to have people from the same area or roles they can be diverse. The group can use various tools as a platform they can arrange it manually as well as online with company portals or LinkedIn, Facebook. As with every other thing, CoP also has a lifecycle that starts from the idea of creating a community to ending it once its objective is fulfilled. A community goes through various stages of development and also have many levels of participants explained below.
Lifecycle stages
Setting- When one gets an idea that creating a community will be good and goes for it.
Starting- Then creating the community by deciding the members and dedicating their roles. Creating the framework of the community and its objectives are decided are included in starting stage.
Operating- Members share knowledge, experience, problems, and try to work out on them. During this stage community continuously improvise.
Winding- As the improvement goes on the problems are solved value of the community decreases showing the signs of shutting down.
Shutting- Once the purpose is completed and objectives are fulfilled the community is shut down by members of the community.
The levels of members within the community are core, active, occasional, peripheral, and transactional.
The core is the center of the community as they manage, organize, and nurture the community.
Active members are the ones who play various roles in the community and are closely active in it. They provide their support in form of marketing, communication, defining vision, purpose, and strategies of the community.
Occasional ones grace their appearance when there is any specific topic discussion and they want to share something.
Peripheral members appear on a limited basis in the group but still feel connected to the community in cases like newcomers etc.
Transactional members are for only transaction supports in the system and are not in continuous contact with the community.
The roles in the Community members are as Coordinator, member support, information resource, and website administrators or simple administrators. The roles can be held by one or more members of the community. They are generally the most innovative, creative, and aware of various areas like technology, community vision, along the benefits of the community individuals.
Maintaining the community
In this stage, the community members continuously improve themselves with time to time discussions. As these meetings are informal the core members need to design the community in such a form in which it can achieve their vision and objective. While doing so they mainly focus on:
Keeping community simple
Encouraging trust within members
Sharing awareness and maintaining a flow of communication
Increasing the knowledge body in a community
Keeping track that the members are all along the same path and understanding each-others.
Benefits of CoP
There are various benefits provided by CoP along with an increase in knowledge and skills. So here we are explaining some of its benefits to various groups like members, organizations, and customers in short for better understanding the implementation of SAFe.
For Members
Improve knowledge and makes member expertise.
Improve communication and hence trust within team members
Improve productivity and efficiency
Create a sense of their importance in a work area
Creates professional reputation and hence increases confidence.
For Organization
Decrease Time and cost
Reduce learning training and sessions
Helps in knowledge sharing
Increase coordination and standardization across the organization
Reduce defects, rework, and reinvention
Builds alliance
For Customers
Improves standards of products
Promote and support national initiatives
Increase efficiency by cultural change
Links various geographical practitioners
As seen from the benefits CoP is a crucial tool in knowledge sharing and supporting continuous learning. The CoP is different from the formal team as they are cultured and nurtured instead of managing formally. The community works, keeping, common thinking and ideas in mind. They are more likely to improve and provide better options helping in their area of expertise.
About Advance Agility
We, at Advance Agility, are the new-age Agile Coaching, Consulting and IT services company. We enable end-to-end Digital Transformation. Agile execution is integral to our being. We are doing SAFe implementation with small, medium and large organization across the globe. Our vision is to be the leading Agile execution player globally. To keep adding value at every process stage. We are on a mission to empower our clients, move from concept to cash in the shortest sustainable lead time by adopting human centric approach to business agility. Embracing the change is in our DNA. Things that keep us apart are Quicker and Seamless execution with End-to-end gamut of services. Our Global presence and Stellar Track Record give us an edge over our competitor.
Connect with us at advanceagility.com to learn about SAFe and SAFe Implementation. Write to us at contact@advanceagilty.com for any agile training or consulting needs. We are always looking for competent agile trainers as well. So if you are a good trainer or want to become one, do get in touch with us to that we can learn, grow and achieve together.
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