But that's ignoring reality. Today's worker reaches out for technology on a daily basis, whether it's using a phone or a computer to communicate and work. That's why technology also exists to help communities of practice come together and share knowledge. These tools allow communities to exist virtually and to present their area of practice to other potential practitioners. They provide a platform for online discussions among geographically disparate people, offer directories based on expertise, as well as document repositories for the knowledge base and use search engines to retrieve information.
According to Etienne Wenger, a learning consultant, communities of practice share three crucial characteristics, which can drive the use of technology. First, communities focus on a domain of shared interest, which implies a minimum level of knowledge. Second, members of the domain create a community by engaging in joint activities and discussions designed to help each other and build relationships. Third, communities develop more than an interest in a subject, but a shared practice based on a repertoire of resources that include experiences, stories, tools and other ways to address a recurring problem.
Wenger, who has published a survey of technologies that support communities of practice, writes that while the perfect product doesn't exist, a number of software solutions are available with useful, relevant features, some of which include:
- Web pages to establish the community's existence and describe their domain or area of practice;
- online discussion areas;
- bulletin board sites for posting questions;
- directories of members with information about their area of expertise;
- shared workspace for synchronous electronic collaboration;
- document repositories;
- search engines; and
- management tools for community coordinators to keep track of members, documents, traffic, etc.
With dozens of products on the market, Wenger's survey has grouped them into eight broad categories that have relevance to communities of practice. At the top are the portal solutions, which are designed for mission-critical knowledge projects within an organization, where use is expected to be pervasive and participation is intensive. These systems include Intrapsect from Intraspect Software Inc., K-Station from Lotus Development Corp. and LiveLink from Open Text, to name a few. Not surprisingly, these products tend to be expensive.
Next in line are the systems that provide space for a project team to conduct its work. Products, such as QuickPlace and Teamroom from Lotus, eRoom, from eRoom Technology Inc. and eProject from eProject.com, focus on project management, task scheduling and managing collections of project-related documents.
If you are looking for something that's not geared so heavily toward the workplace, Wenger suggests using community management tools that connect communities across organizations and their traditional boundaries. The focus here is on interaction, not projects or document repository. Some systems include: ArsDigita Community Systems from ArsDigita Corp.; CiviServer from Real Communities Inc.; and Buzzpower from Multex.com.
Then there are software products that specialize in providing discussion groups with the means to have online conversations, while other products allow for synchronous interactions during online meetings. Some software tools are geared towards e-learning practices while others give access to expertise through knowledge exchange solutions.
In a separate category, all to its own, is Communispace from Communispace Corp. According to Wenger, Communispace comes closest to being the right product for a community. It has features that enable a number of community of practice activities to take place in a virtual environment, including brainstorming, decision-making and analyzing community issues. The specific tools include asynchronous discussion, chat, calendaring, document repositories and a user directory. Communispace is hosted by the provider, so communities simply need Web browsers (and a license) to get started.
When it comes to choosing the software for your community of practice, Wenger suggests you ponder the following questions:
- What types of communities are you trying to support? Are they big, small, have lots of documents or do they just want to interact?
- What are you trying to accomplish with the technology? Do you want to enhance a community that already exists or establish something entirely new?
- Do you want technology to modify behavior? In other words, do you want the system to seamlessly integrate with the way people work (by using e-mail a lot) or are you trying to establish a new level of collaboration between knowledge workers?
- What are the effects of software pricing? You can pay by community, user, volume of activity or without any limitation. Each option brings with it certain advantages and disadvantages.
- What are your technology requirements? Are you going to need some tech-support to manage the practice or a programmer to help script certain functions? Then, there are system requirements, such as Java and XML, to consider.
The bottom line is while the choices for technology abound, it still is a small factor in the success of communities, according to Wenger. Cultural, organizational, personal and cognitive factors have much more influence.
