evolving communities of practice: ibm global …evolving communities of practice: ibm global...

Evolving communitiesof practice: IBM GlobalServices experience

by P. GonglaC. R. Rizzuto

In 1995, IBM Global Services began implementinga business model that included support for thegrowth and development of communities ofpractice focused on the competencies of theorganization. This paper describes ourexperience working with these communities overa five-year period, concentrating specifically onhow the communities evolved. We present anevolution model based on observing over 60communities, and we discuss the evolution interms of people and organization behavior,supporting processes, and enabling technologyfactors. Also described are specific scenarios ofcommunities within IBM Global Services atvarious stages of evolution.

Considerable attention is being focused on com-munities1 as an important element in the life

of an organization. Driven by a knowledge economy,organizations need their employees to become“knowledge workers,” that is, individuals who con-stantly draw on a wealth of knowledge to devise newresponses and solutions for a rapidly changing mar-ketplace. To perform well in this knowledge econ-omy, individuals must constantly apply and add totheir own bodies of knowledge. They do this by find-ing ways to participate on a day-to-day basis in a flowof knowledge that consists, not only of the dissem-ination of data and printed material, but also of theexchange of ideas with other individuals who haveexperience and skill related to the same area of work.This interaction with others on work-related topicsoften leads naturally to the formation of communi-ties of practice. In addition, as “ . . . companies arebeginning to recognize that these communities canbe supported and leveraged to benefit the ‘member-ship’ of communities and the organization as a

whole,”2 they are starting to sponsor the formation ofcommunities and to support their ongoing activity.

Our concept of a community of practice comes fromthe work of Wenger and Snyder who define it as “agroup of people informally bound together by sharedexpertise and passion for a joint enterprise,”3 or sim-ilarly, as a collection of individuals bound by infor-mal relationships that share similar work roles anda common context.4 Examples of communities ofpractice are found in many organizations and havebeen called by different names at various times,names such as “learning communities” at Hewlett-Packard Company, “family groups” at Xerox Cor-poration, “thematic groups” at the World Bank,“peer groups” at British Petroleum, p.l.c., and“knowledge networks” at IBM Global Services, butthey remain similar in general intent.

As organizations start to recognize the role of com-munities of practice in helping them meet their bus-iness needs and objectives, efforts to better under-stand the workings of these communities haveemerged. Knowledge-management-related confer-ences routinely include communities as a key agendatopic.5 Organizations, like those mentioned above,support and report on the formation and ongoingmaintenance of communities, recognizing the influ-

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ence they have in helping the organizations to be pro-ductive and innovative.

One such organization is IBM Global Services,6 whichestablished a knowledge management program7 in1995 that depended heavily on forming and devel-oping communities of practice to benefit both theindividual and the organization. In this paper, we firstlook at the overall program and the types of com-munities that emerged within the context of this pro-gram. Then we describe a general model for howthese communities of practice evolved and explorethe model further in terms of people, process, andtechnology differences and implications that emergeat each stage of evolution. We provide specific sce-narios of communities of practice, showing how theystarted and then progressed to a particular stage inthe evolution model. Finally, we share what welearned about community development and concludewith some possibilities and questions related to theevolution of communities in a business environment.

Communities of practice within IBM GlobalServices

The communities of practice, commonly called“knowledge networks,” are referred to as institution-alized, informal networks of professionals manag-ing domains of knowledge. The common character-istics of and guidelines for forming a knowledgenetwork are:

● They are global in scope, connecting practitionersworldwide and fostering a sense of community.

● They are responsible for a domain of knowledge.This responsibility includes:

–Handling explicit knowledge8 or intellectual cap-ital;9 handling means gathering, evaluating, struc-turing, and disseminating knowledge that isshared among community peers and across cus-tomer projects and seeing to its evolution. Theintellectual capital consists of methods, processes,tools, assets, reported experiences, and any otherdocumentation associated with delivering servicesand considered of value by the business or com-munity.

–Adopting a small set of common roles10 for man-aging knowledge

–Providing opportunities for sharing tacit knowl-edge11 among community members

–Using the common enterprise-wide Lotus

Notes** and Domino** application called ICM(intellectual capital management) AssetWeb12

● They are sponsored by a business unit and fosteredwhere the business sees a need for managingknowledge for its core competencies or to meetcustomer or market demands.

● They are neither organization units nor teams.

The domains of knowledge represented by thesecommunities range from IBM core competencies (suchas enterprise systems management, application de-

velopment, testing methods and practices, productplatform, and organization change) to “go to mar-ket” competencies (such as e-business, package in-tegration, total systems management, mergers andacquisitions, and knowledge management) to indus-try sector competencies (such as automotive, chem-icals and petroleum, distribution, finance and insur-ance, and health care).

Today there are over 60 knowledge network com-munities with members from virtually every countrythat IBM serves. By the end of the year 2000, over76000 professionals had access to the ICM AssetWebapplication and about 20000 participated in someform of community activity. Many of these knowl-edge networks have existed for multiple years. Thisparticipation level and sustainability are indicatorsthat the approach developed and used by IBM GlobalServices has a significant degree of success.

All of these communities evolved with some assis-tance from the knowledge management programspecialists, tools, and processes. However, the levelof assistance varied widely. If the business identifieda need for a knowledge network, the sponsor or lead-ers instigated its formation with the help of the spe-cialists. Sometimes, if there was an existing informalcommunity and the business recognized the impor-tance of supporting that community’s further develop-

Communities of practiceare institutionalized,

informal networks ofprofessionals managing

domains of knowledge.

IBM SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL 40, NO 4, 2001 GONGLA AND RIZZUTO 843

ment, it would seek the guidance of the knowledgemanagement program. Occasionally, a communityon its own sought assistance from the knowledgemanagement group for help with its development,usually to obtain some level of organizational rec-ognition, support, and access to the common tech-nology infrastructure.

Organizational influences related to forming com-munities. Surrounding and supporting the communi-ties are the elements of a comprehensive knowledgemanagement framework (Figure 1) that includes: vi-sion, business strategy, value system, measurements,incentives, processes, technology, and leadership.The framework is important because it helps link oralign a community with the organization’s goals,management, value system, and infrastructure.Forming a knowledge network community in IBM

Global Services depends first on identifying thestrengths and weaknesses of the sponsoring organi-zation in people, process, and technology factors re-lated to each element of the framework, and thenon forming appropriate plans to address the frame-work-related issues raised. Since IBM Global Servicesis a large, complex, global organization, the variouslines of business that sponsor knowledge networkcommunities vary widely on most of the frameworkelements, resulting in environmental variations forcommunity development.

Even though the communities are affiliated with acommon knowledge management program and arean integral part of the overall business model, theycan and do act independently, responding to theneeds of their members as well as the organizationaland marketplace environments within which they re-

Figure 1 IBM knowledge management framework

LEADERSHIPEXECUTIVE

GONGLA AND RIZZUTO IBM SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL 40, NO 4, 2001844

side. Consequently, there is wide variability in howthey “look,” talk, organize, and work, even thoughthey have some elements in common. For example,even performing one of the basic responsibilities—managing intellectual capital in its domain of knowl-edge—the approach varies significantly across thecommunities. Some have a highly structured process;others have a “loose” workflow. Some involve onlya small core of committed specialists in review of thematerial; others create wide-ranging networks of sub-ject matter experts. Some cull material stringentlyfrom their knowledge bases; others loosely definewhat might be of importance to the community andleave much material for consideration. Some createhighly detailed taxonomies; others produce a lim-ited number of general categorizations.

Our experience of this variability among these com-munities, despite their links to the overall knowledgemanagement program and to any organizational di-rectives, coincides with and supports the observationmade by Wenger:13

Communities of practice . . . reflect the members’own understanding of what is important. Obvi-ously, outside constraints or directives can influ-ence this understanding, but even then, membersdevelop practices that are their own response tothese external influences. Even when a commu-nity’s actions conform to an external mandate, itis the community—not the mandate—that pro-duces the practice. In this sense, communities ofpractice are self-organizing systems.

Gathering knowledge about thecommunities and applying the evolutionmodel

A vast amount of information and data about theknowledge network community development was ac-cumulated. The profiles of the knowledge networkcommunities and the evolution model proposed are

outgrowths of work done over the last five years andare derived from three primary approaches. (1) Par-ticipant observation: The authors and their team-mates worked directly with many of the communi-ties to help support their formation and functioning.As such, we “lived” with the communities, partic-ipating in their meetings, conference calls, report-ing, planning, and so on. Sometimes we were activelyinvolved in facilitation, but we were always observ-ing, sharing, and learning. (2) Activity measurements:A number of indicators having to do with the man-agement and usage of the repository of intellectualcapital of the knowledge network were tracked andreported on a monthly basis. Changes over time wereanalyzed and trends noted. (3) Structured interviews:On a periodic basis the leaders, executive sponsor,and a sample of members of the community wereinterviewed using a structured interview guide. Theseinterviews were a “health check” to learn about over-all activities and functioning of the community in-ternally and also in relationship to its larger orga-nizational environment.

In addition, annual strategic and operational plan-ning data for the community-sponsoring lines of bus-iness and geographic regions were reviewed. Thesedata provided insight into organizational recognitionof, support for, and investment in knowledge net-work communities.

How the communities evolved in IBM Global Ser-vices. There is a pattern to how the communitiesevolved and the pattern is influenced by a dynamicbalance of people, process, and technology elements.We observed this pattern across the range of com-munities regardless of the strategy and approachesto knowledge management of the sponsoring orga-nizations. The overall evolution pattern was summa-rized into five stages: potential, building, engaged,active, and adaptive. (See Table 1.) Using this pat-tern we developed an evolution model that helpedus describe those characteristics that distinguish com-

Table 1 Community evolution model definition

Potential Building Engaged Active Adaptive

Definition A communityis forming.

The communitydefines itself andformalizes itsoperatingprinciples.

The communityexecutes andimproves itsprocesses.

The communityunderstands anddemonstrates benefits fromknowledge managementand the collective work ofthe community.

The community and itssupporting organization(s)are using knowledge forcompetitive advantage.


munities in one stage from those in another. Themodel is intended to show that communities are dis-tinct at each stage, having different characteristicsas they transform from one level to another. Thismodel also presupposes that at each latter stage, thefunctions and characteristics of the previous stage(s)already exist.

At first glance our community evolution model ap-pears to be a form of life-cycle model similar to whatWenger13 or McDermott14 propose. Their modelsuse a life-cycle concept to describe communities asdeveloping through stages akin to birth, maturation,and death. Wenger sees communities of practice asprogressing through five stages: potential, coalesc-ing, active, dispersed, and memorable, with levels ofinteraction and types of activities varying across thestages. Members’ interaction within the communitygenerally increases through the active level and thendeclines through the dispersed stage, and prettymuch disappears at the memorable level, althoughmemories, stories, and artifacts of the communitystill remain.

McDermott views communities as living, human in-stitutions that “form spontaneously, grow, mature,change, age and die.”15 He uses this life-cycle per-spective to describe five stages of community devel-opment, similar to Wenger’s model but with moreelaboration of the tensions and challenges that stim-ulate the community to develop and renew itself, butthat eventually lead to the community’s death. Mc-Dermott’s series of stages include: plan, start-up,grow, sustain/renew, and close.

Our current evolution model is similar to Wenger’sand McDermott’s in recognizing formative andgrowth stages of development. However, the evolu-tion model is not a life-cycle approach. In this evo-lution model, a community can mature and dissolveat any one of these stages beyond the initial forma-tion level. The model describes instead how com-munities transform themselves, becoming more

capable at each stage, while at the same time main-taining a distinct, coherent identity throughout.

The evolution model, then, is more similar in over-all intent to, for example, the capability maturitymodels developed by the Systems Engineering In-stitute for assessing software organizations16 than tothe life-cycle-type development model for commu-nities of practice, such as Wenger and McDermottdescribe.

Looking at the communities within IBM Global Ser-vices from the evolution model perspective, we no-ticed some interesting behaviors. Communities maystay at certain stages and not evolve to another lev-el; communities may move “backward and forward”between the stages; communities may have somecharacteristics of one stage while they are still pri-marily at another stage; communities may “rest” forextended periods at one stage and suddenly evolvequickly to another stage. By grouping our observa-tions into a capability-oriented model, we were ableto describe the variations in behavior, process, andenabling technology as communities evolved.

Certain variables that are acknowledged to be im-portant for understanding communities overall, suchas the degree or intensity of participation by com-munity members, are not discussed throughout theevolution model because they did not emerge as dis-tinguishing features across the stages. For example,with this set of communities, participation generallyshowed as much variability within a stage as betweenstages once the community moved beyond initial for-mation.

Description of the stages of community evolution.Each of the five stages has its defining characteris-tics as well as an underlying function that helps ex-plain why one stage is different from the next andshows what to build on from previous stages. Table2 shows these fundamental functions at each stageof evolution.

Table 2 Fundamental functions for the stages of evolution

PotentialStage

BuildingStage

EngagedStage

ActiveStage

AdaptiveStage

FundamentalFunctions

Connection Memory andcontext creation

Access andlearning

Collaboration Innovation andgeneration


At the first stage, the potential stage, a communityis just starting to form. It is in a “prebirth” stage, buta nucleus begins. This nucleus is made up of indi-viduals with something in common related to theirwork or interest, but the individuals have not yet dis-covered fully what that commonality is or how farit extends. At this potential stage, connection is thefundamental function. Individuals who form the nu-cleus must be able to locate one another, then com-municate, and form relationships. A small nucleusof individuals is enough to start the process and pre-pare for movement to the next stage.

At the building stage, a community begins to coalesceand define itself. The initial members, as a group,start to define what the community is going to beand how it is going to build and declare its existence.This core group of members begins to create a struc-ture and processes for how the community will op-erate, and how the members will work together overtime.

At the building stage, both context creation and mem-ory are fundamental functions. The core membersof the community create things together, building acommon understanding of what the community isand what it is not, why it is forming, and how it willfunction. The community then “remembers” thosethings, putting them to use over time. Through thisprocess it begins a shared history. The core groupof individuals building the community begins to rec-ognize what it means to be a member of the com-munity and can then, in turn, recognize and reachout to others—potential community members—whoshould belong.

During the engaged stage a community actually op-erates with a common purpose. It functions on a sus-tainable basis. The structure and processes designedin the previous stage are put into action. The com-munity grows in size and complexity.

Access to one another as community members andaccess to what the group knows are key functions.Since the community is now running, with individ-uals playing their roles and executing processes, thecommunity is learning a great deal about itself as anongoing entity and also learning more about the envi-ronment within which it operates. It starts using whatit learns to adjust and improve. At this stage, the com-munity really begins building its capability to lever-age its explicit and tacit knowledge.

At the active stage, a community reflects, analyzes,and really starts to understand, define, and assessthe value of what it is doing and what it is contrib-uting to its membership and to the organization. Thecommunity further extends its membership andbuilds relationships to other communities.

Collaboration that occurs on multiple planes is thefundamental function at the active stage. Membersare working together to build and sustain the com-munity. They are also working together to solve bus-iness problems and to exploit business opportuni-

ties. They leverage one another and the communi-ty’s shared knowledge to perform work external tothe community. Indeed, it becomes the communi-ty’s responsibility to pool knowledge and work to-gether to address the business issues presented toit by the organization. Community members furthercollaborate to assess the value of what the commu-nity is doing and to publicize that value to the largerorganization. Collaboration promotes an under-standing throughout the larger organization of theneed for and distinct benefit from the community’sknowledge and work.

At the adaptive stage, a community has moved to alevel where it senses and responds to external con-ditions. It can adjust continuously to create knowl-edge and to establish the new structures and pro-cesses it needs for leveraging its knowledge tocompete effectively and to influence—and potentiallyredefine—its environment. Further, the communitymay expand into new environments.

At this stage, the community innovates and generates,creating significant new business objects—new so-lutions, new offerings, new methods, new processes,and new groups. The community identifies, influ-ences, and even creates trends in its area of exper-tise. The community’s innovation affects not just itsmembers and the immediate domain within which

Each of the five stagesof community evolution has

its defining characteristicsto differentiate one stage

from the next.


it operates but other parts of the organization andexternal agencies as well.

We hypothesize, however, that few communities willever reach or sustain themselves as a community atthe adaptive stage. The work being done by the com-munity becomes too important to the organizationfor it to allow the community to continue as a self-governing body. There is a distinct likelihood thatthe organization will want more control and essen-tially convert the community into an organizationalunit.

Through our observations and analysis we have ex-tensive experience with communities at the first threestages and some examples of communities at the ac-tive stage, but we have minimal experience with com-munities at the last level, the adaptive stage. We havefragments of community experience that point to afifth stage, but we have not seen any one communityactually existing and thriving at this level. What wehave seen so far is: one community with one or twoaspects of the adaptive stage, and another commu-nity with another one or two aspects. In the evolu-tion model we have projected from a combinationof (1) a few communities approaching this level andmanifesting some of the characteristics and (2) vi-sions from community leaders that aspire to this stageand are actively working toward achieving it. Piec-ing these together has given us a profile of what theadaptive stage consists of.

The forces of people, process, and technology in com-munity evolution. We learned that a community’sevolution through these stages can be advanced orarrested, depending on the attention that a grouppays to building a foundation at each developingstage. We have seen groups move forward quicklyon some aspects of development and bypass others.Initially, this action may not impact the immediateperformance of a community. However, if a com-munity wants to increase its effectiveness or aspiresto a more advanced evolution stage, it usually needsto return to restructure or build elements from ear-lier stages that it may have shortchanged.

Before describing the characteristics that we ob-served in the behavior of people, the degree and typeof process support, and the types of technology en-countered at each stage of community evolution, weshould review working definitions of the scope ofeach element.

In talking about the behavior of people, we are ref-erencing “people” in a very broad sense. We are con-sidering people as social individuals with their in-dividual and group behaviors, as well as the largerorganizational behavior influence vis-a-vis a commu-nity.17

Processes are sets of documented steps with clearlydefined roles and activities for people to perform.The knowledge network community-building pro-cesses in IBM Global Services include both internal,community-oriented processes and the external pro-cesses that are part of the larger organization. Somekey processes internal to a community are: manag-ing the community’s intellectual capital, sharing tacitknowledge, communications, socialization, member-ship management, and content management. The ex-ternal processes include incentive recognition, bus-iness strategy development and execution, andcompetency development. Measurement processes,a key cultural aspect of IBM, span both internally andexternally oriented community processes. Within thecommunity evolution model, we consider primarilythose processes that are internal to the community.

Technology is the application of science and the bodyof information system knowledge that we use to fash-ion tools, practice knowledge arts, and extract dataand information. Given the strong technical foun-dation of IBM Global Services, the communities useda wide range of technologies from tried-and-truetools and techniques to groundbreaking and inno-vative experiments.

People, process, and technology at each stage. In thefollowing subsections, the five stages of communityevolution are described as to how people, process,and technology are involved with each one.

Potential stage. We now describe the enablers for pro-moting connection in the potential stage listed in Ta-ble 3.

People. In order for the individuals who will becomemembers of the potential community to connect, theymust find one another, communicate, and form alink. Simple socializing behavior is required at thisstage. Some key skills or competencies that helpedindividuals to work well in this stage include: inter-personal communication, curiosity, networking, andthe ability to associate ideas.

To form a community, it is not sufficient to have in-dividuals who may be doing the same job or existing


in the same organizational unit. In order to connectas a community, individuals need to establish per-sonal connections with each other. Each person looksat the others and seeks to answer the very basic ques-tion, namely: Who are you? The actual questionscome out in myriad forms: What do you do? Wherehave you worked? What organizational unit do youreport to? Do you know so-and-so? What groups areyou in? And so on. All of these questions are aimedat finding out information about the other personand forming a connection. For the potential com-munity to form, the collective answer to that ques-tion of “Who are you?” must be: “You are like me.”Additionally, each member of the nascent commu-nity must receive a reciprocal answer: Not only doI recognize that you are like me, but you recognizethat I am like you in something that you value. To-gether we must have at least one important common-ality related to our work or area of expertise thateach of us recognizes.

We have seen dozens of potential communities formand dissolve without any particular organizationalintervention. In fact, the organization usually doesnot know or care that these people are connecting.However, in some instances, the organization, mo-tivated by a business need, becomes the catalyst forthe potential community. The organization activelyseeks out people to form the knowledge networkcommunity and purposefully creates introductionsand potential connections among them. The orga-nization may even create a “matchmaking” respon-sibility to help locate and link individuals. Such a re-

sponsibility may be part of a larger “knowledgebroker” role where the broker has the responsibilityto connect individuals seeking knowledge with oth-ers who have that knowledge.18

Process. The important types of processes are thosethat help identify and locate people who might forma community at the potential stage and those thatfacilitate bringing them together so that they can getto know one another. Common education and de-velopment processes, communication processes, andorganization assimilation processes play an impor-tant role in connecting people. Individuals also ap-ply their own approaches to networking, communi-cating, and socializing, thus allowing natural orplanned communities to form.

Technology. The needs of the potential communitytend to be simple: any technology that facilitatescommunication and places to meet and talk—whether person-to-person, person-to-group, orgroup-to-group—are important. Basic phone callsand conference calls, electronic mail, chat rooms,electronic messaging systems, forums, and bulletinboards, all have their place. Technology that helpsidentify individuals and groups according to their do-mains of knowledge and expertise is valuable, includ-ing tools such as on-line directories, skill and resumedatabases, and search engines.

Given the dispersed nature of the IBM Global Ser-vices organization, individuals who share a work-re-lated area of expertise are located all over the world

Table 3 Potential stage enablers that promote connection

Stage Potential

Fundamental Function Connection

People Behavior Individuals find one another and link up

The organization may be unaware of or uninterested in the potential communityORThe organization may provide some support to locate and introduce individuals

Process Support Identifying potential community membersLocating potential community membersFacilitating bringing individuals together

Enabling Technology Electronic messaging systems: e-mail, chat rooms, listsPhone calls and teleconferencesOn-line forumsOn-line directories


and may not be able to find one another easily. Asolid communications infrastructure and good net-work management are essential enablers for poten-tial communities in this environment. Fortunately,e-business capabilities such as the intranet and In-ternet allow individuals to connect in ways not pos-sible even in the recent past.

Building stage. Here we describe enablers that pro-mote memory and context in the building stage, aslisted in Table 4.

People. Individuals have to learn about one anotherin the work environment. They have to actually sharesome experiences and exchange some tacit knowl-edge. They must learn to talk to one another usingwords in the same way and build a common vocab-ulary and common understanding. By doing this, in-dividuals begin to identify with all the others and,in a sense, make the decision to create a commu-nity. The key skills or competencies that helped peo-ple in this stage include: abstract thinking, organiz-ing ability, comprehensive subject matter expertise,leadership, and the ability to create and share a vi-sion and to develop stories.

At this stage, it is usually a small number of persons,a core group, that comes together. As in the poten-

tial stage, a fundamental question needs to be an-swered. The question now becomes: “Who are we?”However, it is the group rather than the individualformulating the answer. The questions related to de-termining the community identity include: What isour purpose? What do we know as a group? Whatdo we do? How do we behave vis-a-vis one another?As the common identity is formed, the members be-gin creating a shared context, including the defini-tion of roles and norms and the description of plansand processes for how the members will work to-gether. Thus begins the community’s history, markedusually by the emergence of stories that contributeto the early group memory.

From the organizational behavior point of view atthe building stage, the organization often recognizesthe identity of the community and records that it ex-ists. If the organization is taking an active role in com-munity formation, it will also contribute some direc-tion in defining the community’s identity and assistwith the planning.

Process. At this stage, we found a number of sup-porting processes that are helpful. The core groupmay need methods that are oriented to helping themplan for the community’s growth and operation, in-cluding processes to:

Table 4 Building stage enablers that promote memory and context

Stage Building

Fundamental Function Memory and context

People Behavior Core members:● Learn about each other● Share experiences and knowledge● Build common vocabulary● Create roles and norms● Begin a formal history together and record it● Start a repertoire of stories

The organization recognizes the community.

Process Support Classifying and storing knowledgeDeveloping ways to support the knowledge life cyclePlanning for community operationBeginning deployment

Enabling Technology Common repositoryInitial classification and categorization schema toolsDocument and library management systemsCollaborative work environment


● Define the scope and membership for the commu-nity

● Create the roles for members to play and the normsfor guiding behavior

● Determine ways in which to identify, attract, or re-cruit new members

● Discover what the community knows and deter-mine how to classify and categorize that knowl-edge in a way that is natural for the community

● Plan for how community members will share tacitknowledge and manage explicit knowledge

● Align the enabling technology with the member-ship needs and supporting processes

Technology. The community needs a place to put theexplicit knowledge it is accumulating so that currentand future members can easily access and use it. Thisrequirement means having a common repository thatis accessible no matter where members happen toreside geographically or in what organizational unitthey happen to work.

It is also helpful if the community has technologicalsupport for designing and maintaining whatever tax-onomy is appropriate for its domain of knowledge.If that taxonomy support can be linked with otherorganizational taxonomy efforts, all the better.

Systems for managing documents and code (if codeassets are part of the knowledge base) and librarymanagement are useful.

A collaborative work facility (such as Lotus Quick-Place** or TeamRoom) helps the core group to havea place to organize and share its work. Using e-meet-ing technology to jointly design processes and infra-structure can also be helpful during this stage.

Engaged stage. The enablers that promote access andlearning in the engaged stage are listed in Table 5and are described below.

People. The engaged stage involves individuals mak-ing a commitment to the community. They learn howto perform the defined roles. Since they are learn-ing in the context of doing, they also build tacitknowledge about how to make the community work.These activities and interactions help individuals todevelop trust in the other members and in the com-munity as a whole. Some key skills and competen-cies that helped members in this stage include: teach-ing ability, leadership, marketing or publicity skills,ability to operationalize, multilingual and culturalproficiency, and general persistence and tenacity.

At this stage the community also expands beyondits core team. The new members must be given ac-cess to the other community members and to thegroup memory. Tacit knowledge and explicit knowl-edge about the community itself as well as its work-related domain of knowledge need to be shared, andthe group stories must be told and further developed.Original members provide instruction in and modelbehavior for the newer members so that new mem-bers learn what the community is about, how theyfit in, and what roles they play.

Just as important, the new members bring with themaccumulated knowledge and behavioral preferences.The overall community adds to its knowledge andbehavioral repertoire by learning from new mem-bers. This increased complexity carries new chal-lenges for the community in ensuring that all mem-bers have access to one another and to the knowledgethey need. It also encourages the members to pe-riodically re-examine the community’s desired scope,both in terms of knowledge domain and member-ship.

The organization begins to be interested in access-ing community members, learning what the commu-nity does, and how it benefits the organization. Theorganization may set up regular interaction with thecommunity at this stage to keep track of its activitiesand progress. The organization may also intervenein community work, typically by either supportinggrowth efforts or trying to redefine scope, mission,or mode of operation; occasionally these behaviorsinterfere with the community’s development.

Process. At the engaged stage, processes that werepreviously developed at the building stage are im-plemented and are running. Supporting processesfor gathering feedback and measuring communityeffectiveness to help the community learn about it-self and continuously improve are important.

Managing a community’s intellectual capital tendsto become more complex by this stage. Processes thatfacilitate acquiring, disseminating, and maintainingor furthering the evolution of knowledge are espe-cially helpful. The community needs to identify gapsin its knowledge base and fill those gaps, and it con-stantly looks for new ways to advertise for, create,pilot, harvest, and motivate contributions.

Recruiting and socialization at the engaged stageneed to be treated as a process, although a commu-nity will still take advantage of ad hoc opportunities,


such as fortuitous conversations between old and newmembers, to promote growth and development.Even if the community reaches a size that it decidesis appropriate, it must still continue processes forrecruiting and socializing members in order to en-sure vitality.

Finally, communities at this stage are increasinglyaware of the importance of exchanging tacit knowl-edge. They seek ways to enhance person-to-personcommunication so that the tacit knowledge of thewhole community is shared and developed, andmembers learn in the context of doing. A commu-nity that has never had the opportunity to meet faceto face must find ways to compensate for this need.

Since the organization is now conscious of the com-munity, there is mutual benefit to and opportunitiesfor integrating the community’s knowledge manage-ment processes with other organizational processesand workflows, such as new project initiation, bus-iness planning, end-of-project reviews, research de-velopment and overall processes for developing in-tellectual capital.

Technology. The community needs tools to help itlearn about itself—electronic surveys, polling, mea-surements gathering and analysis tools, and so on.Simple measurement reporting tools are often in-tegrated at this stage. Community members whowork directly in managing intellectual capital ben-efit from workflow support.

As the explicit knowledge base grows, technologiesthat help with customized searches are valuable. Acommunity portal can be particularly helpful for in-dividuals who are joining the community and needassistance with access.

To aid with the membership growth, expert locatorsare useful for identifying and finding new members,and a “yellow pages” for the community helps keeptrack of the membership.

Since many of these knowledge network communi-ties are cross-national and multilingual, natural lan-guage translation capabilities, although still limited,are helpful at this stage to handle the expandingknowledge and peer-to-peer communication needs.

Table 5 Engaged stage enablers that promote access and learning

Stage Engaged

Fundamental Function Access and learning

People Behavior Members:● Develop trust in and loyalty to the community● Commit to the community● Outreach to new members● Model knowledge-sharing behavior● Tell community stories● Actively search for and contribute material to build the community knowledge base● Promote and participate in knowledge sharing

The organization interacts with the community and learns of its capabilities.

Process Support Socializing new membersManaging workflowExecuting life-cycle process for developing and managing knowledgeSupporting tacit knowledge exchangeDeveloping and disseminating communicationsGathering and managing feedbackCorrecting problems and adjustingRe-examining and modifying community definition and scopeEnsuring self-governance and self-regulation

Enabling Technology PortalsExpert and community “yellow pages” or locatorsLanguage translation capabilitiesElectronic surveys, polling, and other community-sensing or feedback tools


Active stage. In this subsection we describe the en-ablers that promote collaboration in the active stageas in Table 6.

People. Collaboration becomes a fundamental func-tion at the active stage. Community members callon one another to do work outside the community,focus together to solve business problems, and jointlypursue business opportunities. This function meansthat community members have gained detailedknowledge about one another’s capabilities, under-stand the value of intracommunity knowledge ex-change, and rely on the expertise and knowledge ofthe community. A key behavior is that members turnto the community early on when faced with a newor difficult work problem. Members respond to re-quests from other members as though it is their job.They circumvent organizational barriers in order towork with other community members.

Underlying skills and competencies that helped peo-ple work well at the active stage include: ability toteam and work with others, skill in recognizing a per-son’s capabilities and building teams, facilitation,coaching, business acumen, and ability to leveragethe formal and informal networks of the organiza-tion.

The community also reaches outward, connectingwith other communities across the organization toshare knowledge when needed and to help deal withbusiness problems or opportunities.

The organization at this stage wants, and often relieson, the community to do work that will advance thebusiness. The organization gives support, but it also ex-pects business value from the community’s actions.

Process. Three types of group dynamics processeshelp a community effectively channel its capabilitiesto tackle the multiple business issues it faces: teambuilding, group problem-solving, and decision-mak-ing. The community also needs highly flexible man-agement processes to coordinate multiple workgroups and teams.

For the community to actively work with other com-munities and organizational units, process integra-tion is important. This integration enables the com-munity to have access to other experts as needed, beinformed of business needs and direction, and learnof opportunities to develop intellectual capital in con-junction with customer and internal projects.

Table 6 Active stage enablers that promote collaboration

Stage Active

Fundamental Function Collaboration

People Behavior Individuals engage other community members to solve problems and do“real work”

The community creates focused work groupsThe community connects to and interacts with other communitiesThe organization actively supports and measures community workThe organization begins to rely on the community’s knowledge to contribute

to business value

Process Support Problem-solving and decision-makingSensing and assessing the organizational environmentEnhancing community learning and feedback processesIntegrating with organizational processesLinking with other communities

Enabling Technology Electronic meetingsCollaboration tools, such as for issue-based discussionTeam work roomsAnalytical and decision-making toolsIntegration of community technology with the applications and technology

of the organization


Overall learning processes improve significantly atthis stage, not just for community members as in-dividuals, but also for the community as a whole. Thecommunity specifically develops feedback processesto learn about the effects and effectiveness of the bus-iness work that the community does. It then coor-dinates its feedback process with the reporting needsand processes of the organization.

Technology. Tools for both directive and nondirec-tive collaboration are important at this stage. Thecommunity makes strong use of tools such as cus-tomized collaborative spaces (e.g., TeamRooms orKnowledge Cafe19). In addition, e-meeting technol-ogies enable the community subgroups to move for-ward with their collaborative work. An issue-baseddiscussion facility20 or other structured discourse toolcan aid the groups in coming to decisions as well asrecording and retaining, for future reference, the ar-guments and discussion that led to the decision.Other analysis and decision support tools may bebrought in as they relate to the problem area beingworked on.

At the active stage, technological effort is also di-rected toward integrating the community’s work withmajor organizational applications for both businessdelivery and for training and education.

By this stage, the community is not only using tech-nologies incorporated at previous stages, but it tends

to become a more sophisticated user of the tools andto place more requirements on the technology de-velopers to enhance the current tools and to imple-ment new technologies.

Adaptive stage. Below we describe the enablers thatpromote innovation and generation in the adaptivestage seen in Table 7.

People. At the adaptive stage, where innovation andgeneration are the fundamental functions, commu-nity members are engaged in work that is changingwhat the business does or sells. They assume respon-sibility for working with others to significantly ad-vance the knowledge of their field.

The community members seek to influence morethan the supporting organization. They reach out toand interact with other communities and to otherassociations and organizations to generate new bus-iness, new products, even new markets.

The community has evolved so much that it can spon-sor new communities and may even create chartersfor them.

Underlying skills or competencies that may help peo-ple work well at the adaptive stage include: researchand experimental orientation, marketing and salesskills, competitive intelligence, ability and willingnessto be a thought leader, confidence, adaptability, prag-

Table 7 Adaptive stage enablers that promote innovation and generation

Stage Adaptive

Fundamental Function Innovation and generation

People Behavior The community changes its environment through creation of new products, new markets,new businesses.

Members working together advance the knowledge, and even the definition, of their field.The community sponsors new communities.The organization uses the community to develop new capabilities and to respond to and

influence markets.

Process Support Adapting responsively to the environment, exhibiting dynamic stabilityDeveloping advanced boundary processesMentoring the formation of new communitiesFocusing on innovation

Enabling Technology Pilot uses of technologyIntegration with the technologies of external organizationsTechnology transfer


matism, and a desire to explore the unknown andto create and communicate a future vision.

The organization is vested in the community and be-comes dependent on the community to help developnew capabilities for the organization and to respondto market demands. The tendency, however, may befor organizations to take over a community thatreaches this level. The work being done by the com-munity becomes too important to the business forthe organization to allow the community to continuewithout formal direction and management by the or-ganization. In essence, the organization converts thecommunity into a business unit. However, the com-munity may not actually disappear, but simply “dropback” to a previous stage and either co-exist with thebusiness unit or go “underground.”

Process. In the adaptive stage the community relieson flexible and adaptive processes that are orientedtoward its external environment. The communityworks in “sense and respond” mode21 so that it canstay constantly attuned to changing conditions andreadily respond to and help direct those changes.

The community focuses its existing collaboration andcommunication processes on innovation, and it in-corporates or integrates with processes for researchand development. One of the outcomes of its inno-vation efforts is the creation of new processes, meth-ods, and techniques that advance the state of knowl-edge in the community’s domain.

The community, by this stage, has learned how tosupport the formation of new communities and nowactively mentors their development. It is looked toas a leader, and other communities, groups, individ-uals, and organizational units will seek out the com-munity to learn from it. It needs processes to trans-fer its knowledge beyond its boundaries.

When a community tries to function fully at the adap-tive stage, however, it faces a danger, not only of be-ing co-opted by the larger organization as notedabove, but of potentially losing its identity as a dis-tinct, separate entity because it becomes too fluid inits interactions with the myriad groups and agencieswith which it deals. One potential counterbalance,and what may be a critical process at this stage, isfor the community to develop a highly evolvedboundary subsystem.22 This subsystem would give thecommunity a degree of control over the speed andtype of exchanges that occur.

Technology. At this advanced stage, the communityemploys whatever technologies will advance the fieldand allow the community to innovate. The commu-nity initiates and participates in pilot uses of tech-nology, both by bringing in new technologies and be-coming a pilot group for external agencies and alsoby sponsoring pilots within other groups.

The community expands its technological reach be-yond its own organization, integrating the use of ex-ternal technology with its own tools. The commu-nity might use external technology, such as an on-line electronic trading room or industry associationbulletin board, to communicate and collaborate withthe “outside world.”

The results of this technology experimentation anduse foster the community’s taking a strong role andresponsibility for technology transfer within the or-ganization, increasing not only the development anduse of multiple technologies but also the overall tech-nical competence of the members.

Applying the evolution model to the knowledge net-work communities. After outlining the evolutionmodel, the knowledge management team examinedthe full set of knowledge network communities inorder to classify them according to stages of themodel. We used information from health checks, an-nual strategic and operational planning, our enablingtechnology evaluations, and process improvementactivities to position the communities.

We aggregated the knowledge network communityassessments by line of business to reveal variabilityacross organization environments. Community as-sessments are based on the elements of the IBMGlobal Services framework referenced in Figure 1.

Figure 2 shows the line of business (LOB) distribu-tion of knowledge network communities across themodel stages. We saw that, as expected, the com-munities, on average, fell within the building, en-gaged, and active stages. We also saw that the av-erage stage development varies significantly acrosslines of business. We can speculate that this variabil-ity across lines of business is due to the level of lineof business support, but the further discussion of thistopic is beyond the scope of this paper.

Although these health check data provide a goodview of knowledge networks at given points, they donot adequately show how a community evolves overtime. In order to understand progression, we looked


at specific knowledge networks using a scenario andcase study approach.

Combining the model, periodic assessment data, par-ticipant observation, and community stories from theset of knowledge networks, we can build scenariosand cases that describe the movement and charac-teristics of knowledge network communities throughthe stages of evolution. We discuss some of thesescenarios for the building, engaged, active, and adap-tive stages.

Scenarios of building communities. We have seen sev-eral different scenarios that can apply to a commu-nity at the building stage: the community is contin-ually building; the community suddenly re-energizes;the community puts too much emphasis on technol-ogy at the expense of people and process; or the com-munity disappears.

Continually building. A few knowledge network com-munities have never completely made a transition

into the engaged stage. They have an identifiablecommunity, a few processes to manage their intel-lectual capital, and one or two core group memberswho handle contributions. They provide value for thesponsoring organization by acting as a magnet forcapturing intellectual capital, and they seem contentto continue functioning at the building stage.

Suddenly re-energized. Sometimes a knowledge net-work community that stayed at the building stage fora long time re-energizes. Triggered by a businessenvironment change such as an emerging market op-portunity, it begins to move purposefully toward theengaged stage. The core team develops a renewedinterest in reaching out to and attracting new com-munity members and in acquiring more intellectualcapital. We have seen three different things happen:

1. Communities that have bonded and outlined aset of supporting processes at the building stagebegin to execute those processes. These commu-nities move to the engaged stage very quickly.

Figure 2 Knowledge network evolution stages by framework element and by line of business

AVERAGE OF ALL LoB2 KNs

AVERAGE OF LoB3 KN

AVERAGE OF ALL LoB4 KNs

AVERAGE OF CROSS LoB KN


2. Communities that have bonded but have not es-tablished a set of processes move to the engagedstage but progress at a slower pace.

3. Communities that have not bonded sufficientlyneed to rediscover who they are and what theyare about before they progress.

Too much technology, not enough process or people.In these building communities, the core group in-vests a significant amount of resources on technol-ogy at the expense of reaching out to the broadercommunity and establishing community sustainingprocesses. They often use the term “community” toidentify people assigned to a particular practice orbusiness unit rather than people who share a com-mon interest or expertise. Usually the core groupmembers are innovators and early adopters of tech-nology who are very effective at applying new tech-nology to business problems. However, since theymissed community-oriented operating principles andprocesses that make a community sustainable, theyneed to address these gaps and establish ways to en-courage people to participate in order for the com-munity to move beyond the building stage.

Disappearing communities. We have seen three dif-ferent circumstances where building communitiesdisappear. They struggle to define their collectiveidentity but never actually accomplish their goal.They build a full process for managing intellectualcapital for a broad group of persons but try to sus-tain this process with just the small core group. Theyfail to develop processes for incorporating and so-cializing new members.

In any of these three circumstances, the small coregroup tends to become frustrated because of the de-mands on them to manage the knowledge base,maintain a growing body of intellectual capital, andat the same time, act as experts sharing their tacitknowledge. As time goes on, the knowledge base be-comes dated. Would-be community members, whoattempt to join but are not incorporated, becomefrustrated and stop any further attempts to contrib-ute.

At this point, the building community tends to dis-appear. If the knowledge domain is considered valu-able enough, the core members may be absorbed intoan organizational unit and continue managing intel-lectual capital but not from a community perspec-tive. Alternatively, if the core group sees itself as sim-ilar to another existing community, it may try tomerge with that community.

Scenario of an engaged community. This typical sce-nario involves a community that originates with po-tential members who are relative strangers. A se-lected group of experts are given a charter by abusiness unit to form a community for the purposeof capitalizing on the members’ expertise to providehigh-value customer services.

At the potential stage. The potential members are in-vited by the sponsoring executive and the leader toparticipate on the knowledge network core team.

They meet together for the first time on a facilitatedteleconference during which each person has the op-portunity to share what he or she does related to thedomain of knowledge as well as his or her individualarea of expertise and aspirations for the community.They learn together on these calls about the knowl-edge management strategy, intellectual capital man-agement concepts, activities, and roles. Each persondecides whether to continue on the core team.

At the building stage. Core group members need muchtime to learn about one another and discover howto operate as a community. If they are lucky, the ob-vious gaps in common understanding are identifiedand addressed early on. If not, and the gaps are dis-covered after they begin the business of building astructure and operating principles, the trust and loy-alty that is required to coalesce will develop moreslowly.

Learning and modifying the processes togetherbuilds a foundation for the community by establish-ing a sense of common purpose. Activities of devel-oping a community plan are set up to maximize theopportunities for the group to work together so thattrust can develop. The co-created processes and planbecome an explicit part of the shared history.

Determining who to include and who to exclude fromthe community is an important unifying decision pro-cess for the core team at this stage. The decision-

At the building stage, jointlyestablishing a taxonomy

and knowledge base categorystructure to manage explicit

knowledge content is theimportant test of a community.


making process involves discussion, debate, and eval-uation of the community’s objective and how newmembers would contribute to meeting that objec-tive. A specialized technology for issue-based struc-tured collaboration is introduced if it suits the na-ture of the community.

Jointly establishing a taxonomy and knowledge basecategory structure to manage the explicit knowledgecontent is the important test of a community at thebuilding stage. When a community has difficulty withthis task, we found several factors are at work. First,diverse roles of the community members make it dif-ficult to find common ground. Second, the commu-nity’s knowledge and work—its offerings, services,and products—are changing, and the core team isattempting to build a structure that accommodatesthe old knowledge while preparing for the new. Fi-nally, the trust-building started in the potential stageis not solid enough.

At the engaged stage. The community moves into theengaged stage as it starts implementing its plans. Thecommunity begins a membership drive and trainingprogram, reaching out to the broader community topopulate the knowledge base, and provides oppor-tunities for community knowledge sharing throughactivities such as publishing a newsletter or hostingconference calls. The community develops and pub-lishes something meaningful and useful to commu-nity members such as their methodology and workproducts. It demonstrates continuous improvementactivities such as restructuring the intellectual cap-ital categories or tracking and publishing statisticson most-used intellectual capital. At the engagedstage members acknowledge that they derive ben-efit from the community, and the community pro-vides broader business value to the sponsoring or-ganization.

Scenario of an active community. Here we give someexamples of what was done by communities consid-ered to be in the active stage.

Still in the engaged stage but with active stage char-acteristics. In their evolution, during the engagedstage, these communities went beyond the scope ofthe average community. They incorporated a broaderset of professionals into the community than wasoriginally planned. They held “sharenets”—globalmeetings of community professionals who come to-gether to present intellectual capital and new ideasand to have discussions and learn with their col-leagues from around the world. Such a meeting was

significant because it provided a forum to build abody of tacit knowledge and further developed andreinforced the community’s shared history.

The processes were executed with exceptional dis-cipline. The community membership drives werealigned with service delivery practices that dependedon the community’s domain of knowledge. Theprojects had specific goals, targets, and milestones.Progress was reported to the sponsoring executives.23

The communities provided requirements for process,operations, and technology changes to the knowl-edge management program team to drive improve-ments.

New community roles were identified and estab-lished. For example, one core team incorporated alanguage assistant role to help other subject matterexperts handle contributions in multiple languages;another core team established a network of intel-lectual capital advocates who served as emissariesto project teams to promote the use of the commu-nity’s intellectual capital and harvest new contribu-tions.

All of these communities enlisted executive and tech-nical leadership to overcome organizational obsta-cles. For example, they changed priorities on work-station and application roll-outs; they leveragedinvestment funding for knowledge capture and de-velopment activities; they provided relief for mem-bers who had high service delivery commitments andwanted to contribute intellectual capital. These ac-tions demonstrate that the knowledge networks werelearning to operate and establish their identities inthe context of the organization and to evolve to theactive stage.

At the active stage. We only have a handful of knowl-edge network communities at the active stage. Thesecommunities invested their time and resources to

Communities of knowledgedo not have to reach

the later stages of evolutionto contribute value to

the business.


adapt and refine processes, test new technology, andensure that the community concept was firmlyplanted in the “hearts and minds” of the members.The members began to freely share their experiencesand advise other developing knowledge networks,going beyond the boundaries of their knowledge do-mains.

One active stage community was able to weather amajor organization change with the community notonly intact but seemingly even stronger. The abilityto align the community to the changing business di-rection, while maintaining its unique identity, dem-onstrated the ability of members of a community topool knowledge and work together to address bus-iness issues—characteristics of a community in theactive stage.

The same community was able to assimilate newmembers from a firm acquired by IBM. Another com-munity was able to support a rapid expansion of thepractices that used their domain of knowledge. Theywere all able to establish alliances with other knowl-edge network communities in related competencies.They invited other communities to participate intheir “sharenets.” They coached other evolvingknowledge network community core teams.

Scenario of communities on the path to adaptive. Thefew communities that we recognize as moving intothe adaptive stage have co-created, through globalcollaboration, something of tangible value that in-creased market share and service practice profitabil-ity.24 They have identified and pursued new marketsin a changing business environment.

One of these knowledge networks took on the re-sponsibility to actively mentor the formation of othercommunities in related knowledge domains.

There is evidence that these communities are estab-lishing the new structures and processes that theyneed for leveraging their knowledge, not only to com-pete effectively, but to influence, and potentially re-define, their environment. We are waiting to see andlearn from them as to how they might evolve fullyto the adaptive stage.

Concluding remarks

We conclude by looking back at what was learnedand looking ahead at what must still be done.

What we learned. By taking a look back at what wasaccomplished by these knowledge network commu-

nities over more than five years, we discovered andlearned several important lessons—lessons that areconsistent with those learned by community devel-opment practitioners in other organizations.

First of all, community development is not a “onesize fits all” proposition. Each community that weobserved had its unique “personality,” strengths, andchallenges. After developing and then using the evo-lution model, we were able to sort out some of theindividual differences and assess characteristics moreobjectively. It let us see that, although there are dis-tinct stages that communities transform to, they alsomove back and forth between stages. This movementoften confounds and frustrates members, particularlythe community leadership. Understanding a commu-nity evolution model might give a community, as wellas any sponsoring organization, the confidence toproceed even when this back-and-forth movementoccurs.

We also saw that communities do not have to reachthe later stages to contribute value to the business.Even communities that are in a continual stage ofbuilding can provide a magnet for capturing andsharing intellectual capital and attracting skilled re-sources. And they are in a position to advance, if thebusiness needs or community members require it.

Finally, at any level in the evolution model, basic peo-ple, process, and technology factors work togetherto nurture and sustain the community. The approachtaken by IBM Global Services that pulls together thepeople, process, and technology factors into a knowl-edge management framework facilitates both com-munity evaluation and successful development. Webelieve that this knowledge management frameworkmight also be useful for other organizations that in-clude communities of practice in their business mod-els.

Where do we go from here? As we develop and test acomprehensive set of indicators of knowledge networkcommunity health and evolution and accumulate theinformation, it would be beneficial to compare ourmethods and results for assessing communities withthose of other organizations. It would also be valu-able to refine the factors influencing health and fur-ther align them to the different stages of evolution.

Multiple types of technology are available today thatcan be employed to enable community processes and


behavior. We would like to see how communities in-tegrate capabilities such as persona pages, personalWeb spaces, enhanced discussion facilities, knowl-edge portlets, content organization, and advancedsearching and retrieval techniques, and we would alsolike to see whether these new technologies facilitatefunctioning and growth at each evolution stage.

There are many areas related to community of prac-tice evolution that we would like to explore partic-ularly in other organizations and environments; forexample:

● How do adaptive stage communities develop, andcan they exist and thrive over time, still remainingcommunities?

● How can organizations better learn to accommo-date communities of practice and contribute totheir development?

● How do communities of practice develop and sus-tain themselves if their membership spans multi-ple organizations and groups?

● What can a community of practice do, at each stageof development, to attract and retain talented pro-fessionals? How might they provide the kind of cre-ative, social environment that attracts profession-als and appeals to thought leaders?

● How do key functions, such as the socialization ofnew members, change as the community evolves?

● What “techniques,” such as storytelling and othernarrative techniques, are particularly valuable incommunity formation and in providing a threadof continuity during evolution?

Communities of practice will continue to be an im-portant aspect of the business model at IBM GlobalServices and other companies. As people becomemore acclimated to working in communities of prac-tice, as organizations learn how to better supportcommunities, as processes become more robust, andas enabling technology becomes both simpler andmore sophisticated, we believe communities will as-sume an even more important role in organizations,and new forms of community will develop. By em-ploying what we have learned with our knowledgenetwork community experience and the communityevolution model, and by continuing to observe andlearn, we hope to facilitate the building of those com-munities within IBM and to provide a foundation forachieving the results that will be expected from thecommunities of the future.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge and thank:

● All of the knowledge network core teams and com-munities that have worked so hard to make com-munities of practice a reality within IBM Global Ser-vices (IGS)

● The worldwide IGS knowledge management teammembers, past and present, and in particular thoseengaged in the community development program:Robert Alders, Jeanette Angelo, Renee Beauclair,Nancy Brandon, Anne Burkhardt, Chris Engeleit,Eric Klein, Peter Kluge, Renee Marsh, Lisa Mayer,Renate van Meurs, Barbara Osborn, StephaniePate, Lynne Marie Salinkas, Barbara Smith, MaryStapleton, and Oscar Treur.

● The worldwide IGS Business Unit knowledge man-agement program managers, and in particular:Akinori Ishibashi, Dai Kirisawa, Dave Mann, AnitaPrivett, Troy Robinson, Theo van Rooy, PeterSchuett, and Jean-Jacques Schweitzer

● The ICM AssetWeb architects and developmentteam, and in particular: Jessica Hu, TeresitaManipon, Masayuki Numao, Felicia Paduano, andKo Yang Wang

Special thanks go to: Dave Livesey who is alwaysready to lend a hand, Emil Kloske for his nurturing,for his sharing extensive knowledge on team andcommunity development, and for his willingness tohelp out with any detail at a moment’s notice, RalphRizzuto for helping make connections to the out-side world of community work, Barbara Smith forher wonderful enthusiasm, vision, and continuing en-couragement, and Rod Cowan for trying always toprovide the time and space for us to work on theseideas.

There are others who contributed to the knowledgemanagement program and to community develop-ment efforts; we, unfortunately, cannot list them allby name, but we do thank them all most sincerely.

**Trademark or registered trademark of Lotus Development Cor-poration.

Cited references and notes

1. One of the well-known definitions of a community is providedby Sarason. He describes three major elements of a commu-nity: first, the community members perceive a similarity toothers in the community; second, members recognize a mu-tual interdependence; and third, members feel that they arepart of a larger structure that is both stable and dependable.Since these are elements applying to communities in general,


they should apply to the specific type of community that wedeal with here, namely the community of practice. S. B. Sara-son, The Psychological Sense of Community: Prospects for aCommunity Psychology, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco,CA (1974).

2. E. Lesser and L. Prusak, Communities of Practice, Social Cap-ital and Organizational Knowledge, White Paper, IBM Insti-tute for Knowledge Management (August 1999).

3. E. C. Wenger and W. M. Snyder, “Communities of Practice:The Organizational Frontier,” Harvard Business Review 78,No. 1, 139–145 (January 2000).

4. W. M. Snyder, “Communities of Practice: Combining Orga-nizational Learning and Strategy Insights to Create a Bridgeto the 21st Century,” Academy of Management Conference,Boston, MA (August 1997).

5. For example, the IBM Institute for Knowledge Management(http://www.vistacompass.com/ikm_public/index.htm) andthe American Productivity and Quality Center, or APQC(http://www.apqc.org) include “communities of practice” (byone or more names) as a research topic for member orga-nizations. Knowledge-management-related conferences (e.g.,KMWorld and Braintrust) routinely include communities ofpractice as a key agenda topic.

6. By the beginning of 2001, IBM Global Services had over140000 experts working in 160 countries. IBM Global Ser-vices’ lines of business included: Business Innovation Services,Integrated Technology Services, Strategic Outsourcing, andLearning Services.

7. For a description of the beginnings of the IBM Global Ser-vices knowledge management program, including the startof communities of practice, see: R. Azzarello, D. Haack,F. Schoeps, and B. Smith, “The Design and Implementationof Intellectual Capital Management,” SIM Network XII, No.V, 1–5 (December 1996).

8. Explicit knowledge is knowledge that is “written down,” doc-umented, or recorded in some way. Sometimes explicit knowl-edge is further considered to be procedures, steps, specifi-cations, etc.

9. T. Stewart, Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organi-zations, Currency Doubleday, New York (1997).

10. The small set of common roles includes a community leader,a core team with a router (who first reviews new submissionsof intellectual capital and decides who should evaluate them),and category owners (who are subject matter experts in thedifferent subareas of knowledge and who assume responsi-bility for managing intellectual capital in their subarea).

11. Tacit knowledge is knowledge that is primarily in the headsof people. Michael Polanyi describes tacit knowledge as be-ing “in-dwelling,” meaning that it is constructed from ourexperience in the world—the sense we make of what we see,touch, feel, and hear. N. M. Dixon, Common Knowledge, HowCompanies Thrive by Sharing What They Know, Harvard Bus-iness School Press, Boston, MA (2000).

12. A description of ICM AssetWeb is provided in K.-T. Huang,“Capitalizing on Intellectual Assets,” IBM Systems Journal37, No. 4, 570–583 (1998).

13. E. C. Wenger, “Communities of Practice: Learning as a So-cial System,” Systems Thinker 9, No. 5, 2–3 (June/July 1998).

14. R. McDermott, “Community Development as a Natural Step:Five Stages of Community Development,” KM Review 3, No.5 (November/December 2000).

15. Ibid., p. 616. The Systems Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mel-

lon University has been developing capability maturity mod-els for software engineering for over a decade. Their work

is widely known, and the range of material is most readilyviewed by accessing their Web site: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/.

17. D. J. Cohen and L. Prusak, In Good Company: How SocialCapital Makes Organizations Work, Harvard Business SchoolPress, Boston, MA (2001).

18. J. Horvath, L. Sasson, J. Sharon, and A. Parker, Intermedi-aries: A Study of Knowledge Roles in Connected Organizations,White Paper, IBM Institute for Knowledge Management(September 2000).

19. Knowledge Cafe is a Lotus Notes and Domino applicationthat is designed to help people and teams work together moreeffectively by providing powerful information sharing and col-laboration facilities, both for on-line and disconnected use.It is an application used internally in IBM.

20. For an example description of what an issue-based model in-volves, see A. Dutoit, B. Bruegge, and R. Coyne, “Using anIssue-based Model in a Team-based Software EngineeringCourse,” Conference on Software Engineering Education andPractice (SEEP96), Dunedin, New Zealand (January 1996),pp. 130–137. Basically, the model provides a structure forstarting an issue, then creating proposals to address the is-sue, providing arguments both for and against the proposalsbefore coming to resolution.

21. S. Haeckel, Adaptive Enterprise: Creating and Leading Sense-and-Respond Organizations, Harvard Business School Press,Boston, MA (1999).

22. The boundary is “the subsystem at the perimeter of a systemthat holds together the components that make up the sys-tem, protects them from environmental stresses, and excludesor permits entry to various sorts of matter-energy and infor-mation.” J. G. Miller, Living Systems, McGraw-Hill BookCompany, New York (1978), p. 3. This classic definition ofa boundary is developed in the seminal work by Miller thatdemonstrates the similarities of processes and structuresacross multiple levels of living systems as well as the emer-gent properties that develop at each level. This work also pro-vides a wealth of hypotheses and data about the functioningof a boundary subsystem.

23. The project is described in an IBM internally published doc-ument: P. Schuett, How to Make Knowledge Management Workin IBM—The Experience Gathered in ESM.

24. John Helmbock, the community leader, describes the globalcreation, development, and value of the creation of the modelin an IBM promotional video tape entitled “Intellectual Cap-ital Management,” Version 1 (June 1997), now out of print.

Accepted for publication June 22, 2001.

Patricia Gongla IBM Global Services, 400 N. Brand Boulevard,Glendale, California 91203 (electronic mail: [email protected]).Dr. Gongla is program manager with an Advanced KnowledgeManagement (KM) Solutions team. She has been working since1996 with a worldwide KM group to implement multifaceted KMprograms for IBM Global Services. Prior to that, she held var-ious consulting and staff positions in IBM related to business pro-cess and I/S method development, business and informationmodeling, strategic information management, organizationalinnovation, and knowledge-based and expert systems. Before join-ing IBM, she was a researcher and consultant for various gov-ernmental agencies in the areas of stress-related illnesses and pro-gram evaluation, and was on the faculties of the University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the University of South-ern California. She received a Ph.D. degree in sociology from CaseWestern Reserve University and was a Postdoctoral Fellow inepidemiology and evaluation research at UCLA.


Christine R. Rizzuto IBM Global Services, 590 Madison Avenue,New York, New York 10022 (electronic mail: [email protected]). Ms.Rizzuto is a program manager in IBM U.S. Business InnovationShared Services Knowledge Management and a member of theKnowledge Management in Global Services (KMiGS) knowledgenetwork community. She received her B.S. degree from the CityCollege of New York in 1974 and joined IBM in the Kingston-Poughkeepsie facilities where she designed and developed en-terprise operating systems. Prior to joining the knowledge man-agement program to work with executive teams, communityleaders, and tool developers implementing knowledge manage-ment systems, she held positions as an IBM systems engineer,technical support manager, senior forecaster, and product man-ager in Europe and the United States.


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