I started the New Year with a fabulous conversation with Lilly Rosier talking about how she set up a Community of Practice for the business analyst community at Shimano EU.

We talked about:

• Communities of Practice as a type of ‘social’ learning networkHow a C of P can benefit dispersed teams with common backgrounds
• How a C of P can be especially useful for knowledge sharing and learning from different people’s approaches
• How a C of P is useful for gathering and meeting training needs
• How a C of P is transferable to any profession and can help shift maturity level
• Evolution within a C of P – members feeling ‘safe’ with one another leading to trust and sharing of information = a growth mindset.
• The 3 requirements for a successful C of P: Goal, Commitment, Way of Working, with key factors including: Owner, Drivers, Subject matter experts, Members
• How a C of P can help overcome cultural barriers that block effective communication and understanding
• How Lilly went about setting it up
• What you need to set up a successful C of P

The book that Lilly refers to as giving her inspiration to set up a Community of Practice for Business Analysts is ‘Delivering Business Analysis‘ by Debra Paul, Christina Lovelock, published by the BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.