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.

The authors have both been involved as designers, producers and facilitators of CPsquare?s Foundations of Communities of Practice Workshop (www.cpsquare.com). Through that ongoing exposure to learning and leading in Communities of Practice (CoPs), they became convinced that stories about CoPs play a crucial role in motivation and learning for community leaders. Within communities, the swapping of stories is a means by which local theories of cause and effect are developed and contextualized. These stories provide powerful ways of invoking context, of framing choices and actions and of constructing identity (Bruner, 2002). From the context of a Community of Practice (CoP) concerned with the cultivation of CoPs, (i.e., the Foundations workshop) there is strong anecdotal evidence that stories are of equal value to practitioners and researchers alike. As part of an extended research activity, and parallel to this growing conviction about stories, Stuckey analysed the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) raised over six iterations of the workshop. The ten most frequently asked questions became the basis of semi-structured interviews held with the developers and managers of the communities described in this chapter. The chapter presents the essence of seven community cases and is intended as an enticement to explore the full case descriptions and community stories (which are beyond the limitations of this printed publication) at http://www.cpsquare.org/cases/

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.

There is a perceived gap between the Information Technology (IT) and the Business function in many organizations, which can lead to poor working relationships and a loss of organizational effectiveness. In this chapter, we discuss an effort to bridge this gap through a programme of Relationship Management (RM). The approach is based on the concept of cultivating a Community of Practice (CoP) and relies on facilitating relationships between people in order to share and leverage knowledge. This chapter describes a case study of a large financial services company and shows how the boundaries between Business and IT were spanned through a Relationship Management Community of Practice (RM CoP). The outcomes of the work are embodied in a maturity model that provides a framework for practice and acts as a ?boundary object? enabling the gap to be bridged. The chapter illustrates how cultivating a CoP between Business and IT can be a holistic way to manage the dynamics of knowledge sharing in organizations.

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