Communities of practice (CoPs) are organized groups of people who collaborate regularly around a specific area to achieve predetermined goals.
CoPs are essential because we live in a complex world with adaptive challenges that cannot be solved in isolation.
To deliver the greatest value to members and to the organization, CoPs should focus on specific areas such as practitioner support, business support, learning, innovation, or coordination.
The World Bank Group (WBG) defines Communities of Practice (CoPs) as “A gathering of individuals motivated by the desire to cross organizational boundaries, to relate to one another, and to build a body of actionable knowledge through coordination and collaboration.”
In practical terms, CoPs are organized groups of people who share an interest in a defined area and want to coordinate efforts to achieve specific goals. They collaborate regularly to exchange information, learn together, improve their skills, and advance the general knowledge of the area.
Why are Communities of Practice important?
In the international development context, CoPs exist because we realize that we live in a complex world full of adaptive challenges which no one person can address and solve on their own, in isolation. Fundamentally, CoPs are created when we realize that we don’t have all the answers and that we need help - we need to reach out to others for knowledge, expertise, and experience.
CoPs connect people in meaningful ways so that we can learn and share with one another, in a particular domain or topic area, to build everyone’s knowledge and capabilities so that, individually, we are better at what we do, and collectively we achieve much greater impact.
How do Communities of Practice deliver value?
A community can deliver on many aspects of value, however, choosing one or two specific areas to focus on will make the CoP stand out and deliver more results. To provide some examples of CoP focus areas please take a look at the list below.
Practitioner support: This is the most basic and common area of focus. It is about practitioners asking specific questions, seeking references, providing materials to the community, and getting responses from other practitioners in the community. Many communities start like this.
Business support: this is about focusing on supporting an organization’s business - in the case of the WBG, its operations. Examples of business support are: helping with the recruitment of technical experts for project teams, providing the best knowledge available to a project, or ensuring the quality of areas relevant to the domain in that project. (see also Shared Value.)
Learning: Learning is the primary focus of communities where members learn from one another by sharing their knowledge, expertise, and experience or collaboratively creating knowledge repositories.
Innovation: Innovation is the primary focus of communities whose members want to find new approaches and solutions to specific challenges and problems and want to do so collaboratively within the community.
Coordination: Coordination is the primary focus of communities whose members come from different parts of the organization or different organizations and work on very similar projects or possibly with the same clients. These communities facilitate the exchange of information on who is doing what in order to avoid duplication of effort and encourage efficiency through cross-support, integration, and pooling of resources when appropriate.
Examples of WBG CoPs by focus areas
Practitioner support
The Community-Driven Development CoP (CDD CoP) is a cross-disciplinary, flexible, and dynamic body of CDD practitioners from across the World Bank and outside. The CDD CoP has a unique operating model, revolving around a peer-to-peer structure, and reaching more than 800 members including WBG staff, clients, donors, academic researchers, and NGOs. The community’s just-in-time help desk responds to an average of 200 total requests from practitioners per year. Based on the accumulated knowledge the community also developed a set of real-time practitioner support tools, such as briefing materials, TORs (Terms of Reference), and more.
Business support
Urbanscapes is a community of practice and a platform to enable the exchange of knowledge and expertise surrounding the topic of public urban spaces and its importance to the livability and prosperity of cities. Urbanscapes provides support through a core team of experts participating in business development and operational work. Since their inception in 2016, they have been providing peer reviews and technical support to projects with urban spaces components and also driven new business development piloting of new approaches for urban development.
Learning
The WBG HR Analytics CoP brings together all HR staff who work with data and compile staffing analysis to monitor trends, anticipate workforce needs, inform policy development and decision making at the unit, VPU, and organizational level. The CoP provides a forum for learning, collaboration, innovation, and knowledge sharing, in support of strengthening HR analytics and building a data-driven culture. Members have a sense of belonging to a community and leverage the CoP to share knowledge, ask technical questions, avoid duplication of efforts, identify learning needs, attend learning events as an intact group, develop and disseminate innovative ideas and best practices in the field of HR analytics.
Innovation
Behavior Change, as a focus area within the World Bank, has had one of the oldest bottom-up communities of practice. The Mind, Behavior, and Development Unit (eMBeD) is now bringing a renewed attention to this topic, through the development of innovative projects, in collaboration with practitioners around the world. In one of these projects focused on raising aspirations for families receiving conditional cash transfers in Nicaragua, they were able to show a definite improvement in the overall outcomes of the program thanks to the introduction of sustained social interactions with female role models.
Coordination
Results Measurement and Evidence Stream (RMES) is a WBG-wide initiative bringing together results measurement and evaluation professionals. RMES has responded to the need to support and standardize results measurements in the WBG by developing the profession and skills of its members, promoting Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) standards across the institution, and sharing knowledge on innovative M&E techniques with members and clients.
Great article. Note: Communities of Practice (CoPs) may have other names. 10 years ago, I attended a webinar on "Knowledge Networks" and realized in about the first 3 minutes that Knowledge Networks is another name for a CoP. I had a great interactive discussion with the webinar facilitator after the session and we became fast friends.
At the World Bank Group - there are also other names used for CoPs such as - "Knowledge Silo Breakers" (KSBs) and "Global Solution Groups" (GSGs). When I started working at the World Bank, CoPs were often called "Thematic Groups". In Mexico colleagues use the term "Working Groups" or "Committees" - these are similar, but not quite the same as a CoP, but they were willing to learn and incorporate CoP and Community Management tactics into their Working Groups.
We usually use the term CoPs at the World Bank because the term is more standardized and better understood. Much of the literature available, and our Communities of Practice (CoPs) Toolkit, references CoPs. What do you call your communities?
Blog » Definition of Community of Practice
Definition of Community of Practice
Summary
Resources:
Key Community Building Lessons
What is a Community of Practice?
The World Bank Group (WBG) defines Communities of Practice (CoPs) as “A gathering of individuals motivated by the desire to cross organizational boundaries, to relate to one another, and to build a body of actionable knowledge through coordination and collaboration.”
In practical terms, CoPs are organized groups of people who share an interest in a defined area and want to coordinate efforts to achieve specific goals. They collaborate regularly to exchange information, learn together, improve their skills, and advance the general knowledge of the area.
Why are Communities of Practice important?
In the international development context, CoPs exist because we realize that we live in a complex world full of adaptive challenges which no one person can address and solve on their own, in isolation. Fundamentally, CoPs are created when we realize that we don’t have all the answers and that we need help - we need to reach out to others for knowledge, expertise, and experience.
CoPs connect people in meaningful ways so that we can learn and share with one another, in a particular domain or topic area, to build everyone’s knowledge and capabilities so that, individually, we are better at what we do, and collectively we achieve much greater impact.
How do Communities of Practice deliver value?
A community can deliver on many aspects of value, however, choosing one or two specific areas to focus on will make the CoP stand out and deliver more results. To provide some examples of CoP focus areas please take a look at the list below.
Practitioner support: This is the most basic and common area of focus. It is about practitioners asking specific questions, seeking references, providing materials to the community, and getting responses from other practitioners in the community. Many communities start like this.
Business support: this is about focusing on supporting an organization’s business - in the case of the WBG, its operations. Examples of business support are: helping with the recruitment of technical experts for project teams, providing the best knowledge available to a project, or ensuring the quality of areas relevant to the domain in that project. (see also Shared Value.)
Learning: Learning is the primary focus of communities where members learn from one another by sharing their knowledge, expertise, and experience or collaboratively creating knowledge repositories.
Innovation: Innovation is the primary focus of communities whose members want to find new approaches and solutions to specific challenges and problems and want to do so collaboratively within the community.
Coordination: Coordination is the primary focus of communities whose members come from different parts of the organization or different organizations and work on very similar projects or possibly with the same clients. These communities facilitate the exchange of information on who is doing what in order to avoid duplication of effort and encourage efficiency through cross-support, integration, and pooling of resources when appropriate.
Examples of WBG CoPs by focus areas
Practitioner support
The Community-Driven Development CoP (CDD CoP) is a cross-disciplinary, flexible, and dynamic body of CDD practitioners from across the World Bank and outside. The CDD CoP has a unique operating model, revolving around a peer-to-peer structure, and reaching more than 800 members including WBG staff, clients, donors, academic researchers, and NGOs. The community’s just-in-time help desk responds to an average of 200 total requests from practitioners per year. Based on the accumulated knowledge the community also developed a set of real-time practitioner support tools, such as briefing materials, TORs (Terms of Reference), and more.
Business support
Urbanscapes is a community of practice and a platform to enable the exchange of knowledge and expertise surrounding the topic of public urban spaces and its importance to the livability and prosperity of cities. Urbanscapes provides support through a core team of experts participating in business development and operational work. Since their inception in 2016, they have been providing peer reviews and technical support to projects with urban spaces components and also driven new business development piloting of new approaches for urban development.
Learning
The WBG HR Analytics CoP brings together all HR staff who work with data and compile staffing analysis to monitor trends, anticipate workforce needs, inform policy development and decision making at the unit, VPU, and organizational level. The CoP provides a forum for learning, collaboration, innovation, and knowledge sharing, in support of strengthening HR analytics and building a data-driven culture. Members have a sense of belonging to a community and leverage the CoP to share knowledge, ask technical questions, avoid duplication of efforts, identify learning needs, attend learning events as an intact group, develop and disseminate innovative ideas and best practices in the field of HR analytics.
Innovation
Behavior Change, as a focus area within the World Bank, has had one of the oldest bottom-up communities of practice. The Mind, Behavior, and Development Unit (eMBeD) is now bringing a renewed attention to this topic, through the development of innovative projects, in collaboration with practitioners around the world. In one of these projects focused on raising aspirations for families receiving conditional cash transfers in Nicaragua, they were able to show a definite improvement in the overall outcomes of the program thanks to the introduction of sustained social interactions with female role models.
Coordination
Results Measurement and Evidence Stream (RMES) is a WBG-wide initiative bringing together results measurement and evaluation professionals. RMES has responded to the need to support and standardize results measurements in the WBG by developing the profession and skills of its members, promoting Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) standards across the institution, and sharing knowledge on innovative M&E techniques with members and clients.
This article is part of the WBG Communities of Practice Toolkit licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The toolkit features practical resources to help you develop impactful Communities of Practice. 📖 Learn more about the Toolkit. ▶ Access the Toolkit.
Great article. Note: Communities of Practice (CoPs) may have other names. 10 years ago, I attended a webinar on "Knowledge Networks" and realized in about the first 3 minutes that Knowledge Networks is another name for a CoP. I had a great interactive discussion with the webinar facilitator after the session and we became fast friends.
At the World Bank Group - there are also other names used for CoPs such as - "Knowledge Silo Breakers" (KSBs) and "Global Solution Groups" (GSGs). When I started working at the World Bank, CoPs were often called "Thematic Groups". In Mexico colleagues use the term "Working Groups" or "Committees" - these are similar, but not quite the same as a CoP, but they were willing to learn and incorporate CoP and Community Management tactics into their Working Groups.
We usually use the term CoPs at the World Bank because the term is more standardized and better understood. Much of the literature available, and our Communities of Practice (CoPs) Toolkit, references CoPs. What do you call your communities?