Experience has been gained and a body of literature is building about how Communities of Practice within organizations are formed. We are learning about the progression of communities over time, how they evolve and mature, and about the factors that contribute to their sustainability. However, communities, being "living systems", do not live forever, or even very long. That said, exactly why and how does any particular Community of Practice disappear? This chapter will discuss the factors related to the ending of individual communities. Specifically, it will address three basic questions: 1. In what ways do Communities of Practice disappear; what are the different paths and patterns? 2. Why do communities disappear? 3. What are ways to help a community transition? The material for this chapter is drawn primarily from observations of and experiences with the Communities of Practice within IBM Global Services. A number of these communities over the past six years have "disappeared", but they have not all "disappeared" in the same way. The authors will discuss patterns and variations that have emerged as these communities vanished from the organizational scene. In working with these communities, they have also develped a general guide to aid in the communities? transitioning. The authors will very briefly describe the steps in this guide.

The boundaries of a Community of Practice (CoP) have changed significantly because of changes in organizations and the nature of the work they do. Organizations have become more distributed across geography and across industries. Relationships between people inside an organization and those previously considered outside (customers, suppliers, managers of collaborating organizations, other stakeholders) are becoming more important. In addition, organizations have discovered the value of collaborative work due to the new emphasis on Knowledge Management - harvesting the learning of the experience of members of the organization so that it is available to the whole organization. This chapter offers a practical toolkit of best practices, tips and examples from the authors? work taining leaders to launch and sustain a virtual CoP including tips for chartering the community, defining roles, and creating the culture that will sustain the community over time.

This chapter looks at the work of a team of remote workers and how they have developed into a Community of Practice (CoP). It explores the roles that technology and communication methods have on the formation and development of the community. In telling the story of the progression from a team of individuals to a CoP, the chapter provides a practical guide to others wishing to do the same. Two aspects of the work of the team are considered in depth: 1) Building Communication Systems across a Distributed CoP 2) Building commitment, ownership, engagement and focus in a Distributed CoP The team and community on which the chapter is based is one of some 20 people working remotely for Ultralab, a learning, technology and research centre in Chelmsford UK. The work of the team is online facilitation for the National College of School Leadership (NCSL). The team meet together approximately four times a year, using an online community space, the Facilitators? Forum, as their day-to-day working space.

Organizations continually look for ways to do more with less. One of the most important methods today for helping improve the company bottom line involves linking experts in Communities of Practice to find, share and validate best practices, ideas and solutions. This chapter examines how several best-practice organizations select Communities of Practice, provide support for their ongoing work, develop specialized roles to sustain their efforts, and use technology to bolster the rich tacit knowledge exchange offered by these entities. APQC has also developed a list of critical success factors for Communities of Practice and questions to help organizations develop those factors from its research on Knowledge Management over the last 8 years.

This chapter is about the question of what creates and sustains viability in Communities of Practice (CoPs) embedded in an organizational context. Experience with successful CoPs at Siemens AG has shown that even though most of them differ greatly from each other in many aspects, they all share five common factors that are necessary for the viability of a CoP. These five factors are introduced in the following pages. They represent an approach that can be used to analyse and improve CoPs that do not seem to be viable and as a guide for CoP members and moderators to maintain viability in their own CoPs.

This chapter presents a case study of the creation and evolution of a fee-based, multi-company Community of Practice (CoP) for Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in the San Francisco Bay Area over a six-year period. It describes the principles, processes and practices required to form and maintain a trust-based, face-to face, learning organization where members share accumulated knowledge. Additionally, it states some of the individual, collective and Information Technology industry benefits and results that have accrued from member participation in the CIO Community of Practice. The authors hope that the description of this CoP will foster the same sense of excitement for would-be practitioners that they feel.

Most discussions of Communities of Practice (CoP) place them in the context of a primarily internal-to-the-organization approach to managing knowledge. The construct, however, has application across the entire value chain of an organization, including the domain of a company?s customers. This article explores the strategic value of building Customer Communities of Practice (CCoPs), learning networks among customers of a company whose win-win value proposition helps customers gain valuable insights from other peers while also providing the sponsoring company with a means to further innovation, loyalty and deeper insights into the markets they serve. The analysis suggsts three types of CCoPs, including business to consumer, business to business, and communities of channel distributors. Case studies of each are presented and an especially extensive treatment is offered of the second type based on the author?s experience of building a CCoP for his own software company. The discussion concludes with several lessons learned and practical guidelines for building successful CCoPs in any industry.