Cultivating Communities of Practice

A must-read until something better comes along 2009-10-03

Reviewer: Michael Tiemann

I ordered this book on a co-workers "you need to drop everything you are doing and read this book" recommendation, and I must confess, it was immediately useful the day after I read it (and still two weeks later, after I've had a chance to share its insights with hundreds of people). And indeed I have found myself recommending it, despite numerous limitations.

The strongest and most important contribution this book makes is to first define a robust definition of community and community practice within the command-and-control corporate hierarchy. I especially appreciated that the authors did not go overboard (as so many business authors do) and try to redefine absolutely everything in terms of their particular insight. Their restraint makes the first two chapters a very safe "if you care the least bit about this subject, you need to get grounded in these two chapters *now*".

The most glaring omission of this book is that there is no discussion whatsoever about free/open source software. Granted the book was published in 2002, but by that time:

* Netscape started the open source Mozilla project (1998)
* Red Hat went public on NASDAQ, using a community-based R&D model (1999)
* IBM committed to invest $1B into Linux (2000)
* Amazon.com reported its first-ever profit, attributed in part to its use of Linux (2001)

One possible explanation for this omission is that the authors wanted to leave technology (and thus technology-mediated practices) entirely out of their discussions. But the fact remains that the free software community, which was started explicitly as a community first (Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman), and the open source movement (which was a combined commercial/community symbiosis, see Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution (O'Reilly Open Source)) are defining examples of the cultivation of communities of practice at the billion dollar level in 2002 (and now well past $10B today). Such an omission makes me very ambivalent about recommending this book to the communities I work within.

Hopefully the authors will see fit to release a revised and updated version, one which maintains its neutral and yet insightful perspective, while also giving some much-deserved attention to both the free and open source software communities as well as the ways in which those communities have enabled other communities to operate (using the World Wide Web, Wikis, and other open source technologies).

Cultivating Communities of Practice (Purchased on 07/09/2009) 2009-08-09

Reviewer: Dorian L. Lennon

Great book on utilizing principles of Community Development in managing an organization. Including all stakeholders is so very pertinent.

An unusual guide to developing communities of practice 2009-02-27

Reviewer: Rolf Dobelli

Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott and William M. Snyder have written an exceptionally clear and honest book. While they obviously are deeply committed to communities of practice and exuberant in embracing the concept - particularly in the realm of knowledge management - they also have observed enough of these communities to see how they can fail to crystallize, can go bad or can survive but never gain recognition. This gives a distinctly realistic edge to their methodical book. The authors work through the definitions, core components and guiding principles of these communities, and describe how they fit within existing formal structures. They illustrate their claims with numerous examples. getAbstract advocates this solid introduction to communities of practice to two groups of readers: anyone interested in knowledge management and anyone interested in community development, including organizational culture.

Excellent work on Communities of Practice 2008-08-11

Reviewer: Bas Vodde

Cultivating Communities of Practice is the second book from Wenger which is only about Communities of Practice (COP). The first book was a little dry and academic (and intended to be), but this book is your typical business book, which makes it easy to read. Wenger is teaming up with Richard McDermontt and Willian Snyder, which probably helped a lot in the amount of real-life stories in the book.

The books can be separated in two major parts. The first five chapters are about just about COP and the last five chapters are about COP related to other topics.

The first two chapter are introduction chapters which talk about what COP is and what their value is to the organization. It also does a good job in separating COP from other communities. The three main elements of a COP is domain, community and practice. A COP related to a domain, creates or has a community and owns a set of practices within that domain. They are self-managing and emergent, which means that in organizations its hard to create them -- you need to cultivate them.

The third chapter talks about the cultivation and the principles of doing so. I probably liked this chapter most, it's concrete and clear. It can be used directly in organizations who would like to promote communities.

The next two chapters describe a typical life of a COP and the different stages they go through. Knowing the typical stages helps in deciding your actions to cultivate them.

Interestingly, I wish I would have stopped reading after chapter 5. (which the exception of chapter 7). At this point I thought the book was one of the most interesting books I've read in a while, but then the second part was disappointing to me. Chapter six talks about distributes COP. It is still important, but somehow the tone of the chapter changes (or did my mood reading it?). Chapter seven was good again, about the downside or dysfunctions of COPs and what to do about it.

Chapter eight, about measuring the value of COP, completely lost my interest. The writing style seemed to change (different author?) and the emergent, self-managed tone of the first couple chapters changes to a more controlling tone. The examples also changed and most related to McKinskey.

Chapter nine is the typical "change" chapter of business books and describes the stages for implementing COP in organizations. Chapter ten tries to predict the future of COP. Though I felt chapter ten just miserably failed and it even seemed the authors moved away from their previous definition of COP and talked about communities in general.

After the first five chapters, I would have rated this book five stars and would have recommended it to everyone. Though, the last five chapters would just be a three star rating, so I'll go for the average here.

I'd strongly recommend to buy this book and read chapter 1-5 and 7.

A must read for those working to create learning communities 2008-06-07

Reviewer: Tony

This book was recommended to me by a colleague who has years of experience in cultivating learning collaboratives. It is stunningly insightful and practical, and the authors speak from observation and experience spanning a wide range of organizations and circumstances. It really is a "how to think about this issue" and "how to make it happen successfully" manual. Highly recommend it.