Review

This book is light on content and insight, and heavy on plugs for follow-on consulting work. There isn’t a coherent narrative or framework. I’ve been part of some great product communities, this book has reinforced how lucky I’ve been and how special they are.

Key Takeaways

The 20% that gave me 80% of the value:

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

A Community of Practice (or CoP for short) is a group of people who regularly interact around a shared passion, that they want to learn about and get better at
CoPs were first proposed by Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger in ‘Situated Learning’ (1991). Wenger expanded on the concept in Communities of Practice (1998)
CoPs are about sharing information, improving skills and working advancing the general knowledge of the domain. CoPs are built on personal relationships, networking, knowledge sharing and common skills
CoPs help product people share best practice and ways to solve specific challenges
CoPs can help direct personal development and are incredibly useful when onboarding new team members
CoPs should be a safe space to share frustrations
You should create Community of Practice Canvas (more details below, in in-depth section)
How to start a Product Management Community (Phases / Steps)
- Phase 1: Create the minimum viable community:
- Phase 2: Give it some structure
- Phase 3: Formalize it and find community management allies
CoPs don’t necessarily need rules and structure when they’re starting out
Establish rituals in larger more mature CoPs
Consult the community about adding or removing rituals

Product managers can feel lonely on their teams
Be careful of CoP presentations feeling like they are ‘high stakes’
If participation is low → join forces with another CoP that has some overlap (e.g. UX)
Management should make it clear that it’s encouraged to spend time with the CoP
Expect 10% of people to actively take part and come to every meeting
Steal from the best: invite and watch thought leaders
We really do learn in community, by discussing ideas with each other, by hearing about what other people are doing, and by seeing lots and lots of examples
Set monthly challenges: designed to help people invest in a discovery skill
Monthly Book Club: read a book one month → discuss the one we read the previous month
When you participate in a CoP, it’s very important to have a goal for why you’re doing it
Crowdsource what people are struggling with. Identify common pain point, then grab material or speakers that can help
Just start the community with a few people. Once you build the core, then the others will join and gain value from it
Just because there is no visual engagement on a post, that does not mean that the post was not valuable to the community
CoPs only work if you can find committed individuals investing in keeping them up and running
The smaller and more personal a community is, the less effort it takes to keep it alive
Generally people want to contribute, they just need some encouragement
Find the allies within your organization

In-depth Summary

Chapter 1: Communities of Practice: The Essentials

A Community of Practice (or CoP for short) is a group of people who regularly interact around a shared passion, that they want to learn about and get better at
CoPs were first proposed by Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger in ‘Situated Learning’ (1991). Wenger expanded on the concept in Communities of Practice (1998)
CoPs are about sharing information, improving skills and working advancing the general knowledge of the domain. CoPs are built on personal relationships, networking, knowledge sharing and common skills
Through sharing information and experiences members learn from each other
Once you have more than six people who are keen, communication gets harder and you need think about starting a CoP to put more rigor around:
- Rituals, cadence, formats and topics of discussion
- You might need to define the goals of your CoP too
CoPs help product people share best practice and ways to solve specific challenges
CoPs can filter and curate content so it’s most relevant for your company and context
CoPs can define your product culture and your product management approach, through the methodologies you use
CoPs can help direct personal development and are incredibly useful when onboarding new team members
CoPs should be a safe space to share frustrations
They can help drive change, through forming a single voice and view on how to improve company interactions between disciplines
Very few companies are currently making use of the CoP format or aware of its power

Chapter 2: Getting Started: What you need to do

The author teases a Community of Practice Canvas (but you’ll have pay for consultancy to learn how to use it 🤷‍♀️).
Community of Practice Canvas headings:
- Purpose: What does the CoP want to achieve? (limit to 3)
- Values: What’s important to us as a community? (limit to 3)
- Success Definition: How does the community define success?
- Roles within the community. Who is the community for and what roles can members play?
- Finding Rituals and Rhythm. Which rituals deepen the bonds among members? (also worth limiting)
- Content and Curation: What content creates value for the community?
- Workshops: Which workshops will nurture the community?
- Shared Experiences: How to create shared experiences within the community?
- Practicalities: How do people join, or leave? What are the rules?
- Channel and Platform: What channels does the community use to communicate and gather?
- Incentives: Are contributions rewarded in some way?
- Financing, sponsorship and leadership support: What is the community plan to be financially sustainable?
How to start a Product Management Community (Phases / Steps)
- Phase 1: Create the minimum viable community:
  - Successful communities start from real personal connections between 2-3 people
  - You can’t skip this stage. Large artificial communities tend to fail
  - Find a couple of people who are passionate, and get going, share and learn from each other
  - If successful you’ll have some momentum
  - Don’t get too involved. Allowing the group to have autonomy increases motivation
- Phase 2: Give it some structure
  - If your Product Managers are sharing resources and learning form each other you’re ahead of most companies
  - Steer the conversation from updates toward reflecting which tools, methodologies, and frameworks made them successful
  - Keep the group small but add a ritual that allows everyone to engage. Make sure it is a value add ritual, else participation will be low
  - Create a shared learning goal between peers. You can find the right goal by running a workshop. Find several people with similar challenges then find a good format to tackle them (e.g. reading a book, watching a talk together, attending a meetup). Then bring folks back into a group to share perspectives and learning
  - Start by making these events a “one-off.” Don’t worry too much about setting them up as community rituals in the first place
  - Let time go by, and let people learn the things they want to learn
  - Remember people have a job to do, this make attendance hard but incentive high for learning new skills
  - If new sessions aren’t happening organically, there could be a systematic problem with time or culture
  - We need to invest time in learning and reflection to master our craft
  - Leadership should encourage people to attend
  - Call a product community retro. Focus on the things you can action. Give them four headlines to think about:
    - Community Purpose
    - Success measures
    - Rituals
    - Time investment
  - Step 2 is about creating a real community connecting all the product folks in the organization. Help them connect and find things to learn together
  - Step 3: Formalize it and find community management allies
    - Ideally the community itself is voting to spend more time together an organize better
    - Desire to do more raises questions like…
      - Who has bandwidth to help organize?
      - Is there any budget?
      - Do we have permission for an offsite?
    - This is a sign if a healthy curious community, help where you can
    - A CoP can encourage folks to learn and master their craft. It can also keep senior staff more engaged and motivated
    - Get out of their way and help them get the support and sponsorship they need to follow their passion
    - Align learning goals to company needs where possible
    - At 40 members and 3–4 different rituals consider allocating official time and resource to maintain the community (like prepping sessions etc.)
    - Generally senior product people like doing community management work. Find community allies, and get them the support to do it well

Chapter 3: Community Guidelines (3 examples)

CoPs don’t necessarily need rules and structure when they’re starting out

Example Community Guidelines:

The community purpose is to share product management knowledge & best practices

Members are expected to contribute by sharing their experiences, insights, and expertise

Respect the views and opinions of others, even if you disagree with them

Personal attacks, bullying, and discriminatory language are not tolerated

Keep discussions focused on product management

Do not share confidential or proprietary information without permission

Use the appropriate channels for specific discussions and keep the conversation organized

Help to create a safe and welcoming environment for all members by being respectful and considerate of others

If you have any questions or concerns, reach out to community moderators

By joining the community, you agree to abide by the guidelines

Chapter 4: Community Checklists and Questions

Establish rituals in larger more mature CoPs
A strong set of product rituals:
- creates a rhythm and glue that holds the community together
- fosters a sense of belonging and shared identity through interactions
- facilitates learning and collaboration
- can be formal or informal
- are well-planned and organized, with clear agendas and goals
- are inclusive and participatory
- have ground rules (respect others, stay on topic, listen to each other)
Consult the community about adding or removing rituals
Examples of CoP Purpose:
- Building social connections
- Creating best practices
- Identifying and addressing skill gaps
- Learning from others
- Learning together
- Sharing with others
- Talking about and solving problems together
- Sharing success stories
Examples of CoP Success Measures:
- High return on time invested by members
- Self-sustaining (the CoP is not reliant on a few people)
- Safe environment to share and to learn together
- Improved employee onboarding
- Increasing mastery (as described by Daniel Pink)
Questions to ask when thinking about adding more rituals:
- Which rituals deepen the bonds among members?
- Which rituals embody the community’s values?
- Which rituals mark specific milestones in the membership experience?
- Which rituals are members-only vs. open for others (engineering, design, the public)
- Which rituals help us run or mature this community?
- Which rituals happen online?
- Which rituals happen in person?
- What is the right rhythm for the rituals?
Questions to ask about content sharing and curation:
- What content creates value for the community?
- How can the community tell the stories of its members?
- What content will create deeper bonds among members?
- How do members contribute valuable content to the community?
- How do we bring in external stimulus?
- How can content support the ritual’s rhythm? Editorial calendars = stability + freshness
Ideas for rituals and meetings…

Informal	PechaKucha nights (20 slides, 20 seconds each)
Talking formats	In person Online Asynchronous (video, chat, whiteboard) Broadcasting (newsletter, internal blog) Learning library (physical books)
Talking rhythm	Daily: Slack channel Weekly: 1:1 surprise lunch Monthly: learning challenge, product team game night, employee onboarding session, themed learning session Quarterly: book clubs, training days, product academy Annual: 2 day product summit
Cross-CoP Sessions	With engineering, design etc.

Chapter 5: Learning from Other CoP Leaders

Community is a place where people…
- belong
- turn to for help
- can contribute to help others
Product managers can feel lonely on their teams
Meeting ideas:
- ‘Product and Friends’ is a great name for an open community meeting
- Product training day → A theme, a keynote, some activities, wrap up
- ‘Product Academy’ → to onboard and teach more junior PM. One week of:
  - Understanding our users and the market
  - Delivering impact
  - Data & analytics
  - Engineering basics
- Product teardown meeting → analyze other products, discuss the findings, and learn together. Only one person to prepare something
Be careful of CoP presentations feeling like they are ‘high stakes’
If participation is low → join forces with another CoP that has some overlap (e.g. UX)
Don’t book CoP sessions over stand-ups
CoP engagement is mostly driven by intrinsic motivation
Management should make it clear that it’s encouraged to spend time with the CoP
Expect 10% of people to actively take part and come to every meeting
Steal from the best: invite and watch thought leaders
Internal communities allow you to talk about things you can’t talk about on the outside

Three circles model developed by Michel Bachmann

Creating a space for people to come together, share, learn, and talk about what’s working and what’s not working
We really do learn in community, by discussing ideas with each other, by hearing about what other people are doing, and by seeing lots and lots of examples
I’m done with being the “expert.” That’s not the role I want to play.
Set monthly challenges: designed to help people invest in a discovery skill
Monthly Book Club: read a book one month → discuss the one we read the previous month
- Design in weekly activities to help people apply what they read in the book
Have a new member call with everyone who joined in the last two weeks
Create a new member journey and an onboarding process. Outline all the things you’d want a new member to do (e.g. introduce yourself, reply to somebody else’s post)
Conference clubs → prepare for external PM conferences, raise awareness, builds networks
Large networks are important in Product Management
When you participate in a CoP, it’s very important to have a goal for why you’re doing it
Friday “Product Coffee” → share things that happened during the week like successes and challenges and pick each other’s brains on particular themes
Some people are just ready to receive but not ready to give
Post about your failures, make it OK to be vulnerable
Crowdsource what people are struggling with. Identify common pain point, then grab material or speakers that can help.
Start with basic tooling, even an excel sheet of resources can be useful
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Just start the community with a few people. Once you build the core, then the others will join and gain value from it.
Just because there is no visual engagement on a post, that does not mean that the post was not valuable to the community

Chapter 6: Digging into the data

CoPs only work if you can find committed individuals investing in keeping them up and running
Think about how to reward the right behavior: learning, sharing, and CoP building
The smaller and more personal a community is, the less effort it takes to keep it alive
What are rituals/formats/channels that work well for your company’s community:
- Bi-weekly call: random updates + focused learning
- Monthly events: e.g. learn about Product Analytics
- Monthly informal get-together
- Quarterly formats: book clubs or external speakers
- Quarterly off-sites: Product training camp
- Attend external events and share back
- Onboarding calls and workshops
- Product academy/community training days
- Community newsletters
- Weekly learning challenges; Quizzes
- Chat tool + weekly roundup
- Wiki sharing/weekly worthy reading
- 1:1 meetings between people who normally don’t collaborate
Generally people want to contribute, they just need some encouragement

Chapter 7: Conclusion

Follow more product people for ideas
Find others building a product community and swap notes
Find the allies within your organization

bookworm

Strong Product Communities – Petra Wille