The Differences Between a Community of Practice and a Center of Excellence
Photo by Celestine Chua
If you are working in an organization, you might be thinking about how to share practices across agile teams. Agile teams inspect and adapt over time, using retrospectives in particular to change their behaviors and practices with the goal of improving. A team improving is great, and it would be awesome for that team to share what they’ve learned so that others can benefit. To encourage good practices across teams, organizations often establish centers of excellence or communities of practice. What's the difference?
Communities of practice are groups of people with similar interests who share experiences with a common goal of improving. People talk to one another and learn from each other. All levels of expertise are welcomed, and all experiences can provide learning. A community of practice can work together to solve a problem and adopt a common solution if the community agrees to do so.
In contrast, a center of excellence often implies that a smaller group recommends (or even requires) certain practices or templates be used. The leaders of the center of excellence have authority. Experience sharing may not be welcomed if it is not aligned with the leaders’ views. This is unfortunate because it limits the organizational learning and stems from a belief that excellence comes from applying the same behaviors and practices across teams. An agile center of excellence does not have to be this way! It is entirely possible to start an agile center of excellence that serves the greater organization by connecting people and ideas for better business outcomes.
There’s goodness in sharing experiences and ideas as peers. The safety of community naturally allows for deeper sharing and exploring of ideas. A good center of excellence can also support adult learning and promote ownership of ideas—what’s not to love about that?
"Tell me, and I forget. Teach me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I learn." --Benjamin Franklin
Many organizations that I’ve seen are more comfortable creating centers of excellence for consistency and governance purposes, which is unfortunate. Leaders feel assurance that only the best practices will be spread through centers of excellence. Self-organizing communities are unpredictable and rely on some experimentation to encourage learning. And that's precisely where the goodness lives. Centers of excellence can help connect ideas from those experiments to other teams and support cross-pollination too.
