Detailed Results from My Survey: Company Internal Product Communities of Practice

I dedicated a large portion of 2022 to learning all about product Communities of Practice (CoP). My research involved two main activities: conducting in-depth interviews with CoP leaders/organizers and running a survey of CoP participants. By the way, if you’d like to explore the interviews with CoP leaders/organizers, you can find them all here.

The survey results were such a treasure trove of information that I couldn’t fit it all into a single blog post. In this second post in the series, I’ll provide detailed results from the respondents who participate in company internal Communities of Practice. These are CoPs that are only available to employees within a given company. You’ll see from the results that there can be a lot of variation in how these CoPs are organized and incentivized.

Looking for a high-level overview? You can find that here. Or, if you’d like to explore the detailed responses from cross-organizational CoP participants, you can find those here.

In this post, you’ll have the chance to comb through the results from the survey respondents who participate in company internal CoPs. As it is likely super boring for you to go through all the answers in detail, I’ve aggregated similar answers and each bullet point summarizes them. The examples in parentheses are quotes so that you get an idea of exactly how people were phrasing things.

🎯 Answers from participants that are part of a company internal CoP

How many people are part of your company’s CoP?

What do you like most about your company's CoP?

• We share the struggle, learn from others, and I can get advice
  (“Active case consults that are applicable to immediate problems/use cases. Everyone is learning, sharing.”)

• Networking and team building
  (“It connects people who would not normally meet and brings case studies to them”)

• Our CoP drives better ways of working together
  (“Discussing internal challenges and procedures and improve them”)

• Learning from external speakers
  (“Inspiration from guest speakers on challenges we are having.”)

• Improve facilitation and speaking skills
  (“The Company's CoP is basically the entire PM team. What I like most is that we rotate which PM is responsible to bring a topic to the group, so we all learn about the content, but individuals also learn facilitation and leadership skills.”)

• Unblocking me
  ("I get almost immediate response to my questions")

• Having a good time together
  (“we can share knowledge and expertise, build psychological safety and have fun”)

• People development
  ("Open discussion on PM practices, identifying gaps in the individual's knowledge as well as in company's understanding on PM")

What are rituals/formats/channels that work well for your company's community?

• (bi-)Weekly update call including

• random updates and

• focused learning ("thirst for knowledge" Thursdays)

• Monthly structured/prepared/themed events (“Analytics Brown Bag Session”)

• Monthly update call

• Monthly informal get together (Friday Beers, Product Team Games Night, Product goes carts)

• Quarterly formats (F***-up nights, Book Club, External Speaker "LEX—Learning from Experts")

• Quarterly offsite (Product Training Days, Product Barcamp)

• Attending external events together, socializing

• Attending external events to share what we've learned

• Employee/community member onboarding calls

• Employee onboarding community workshops (“from PMs for PMs”)

• Product academy/community training days (from members for members)

• Community newsletter

• Weekly learning challenges

• Quizzes (“Quizzes in Slack after reading the same blog post”)

• Chat tool + weekly roundup (“what happens in our community this week”)

• Wiki sharing/weekly worthy reading

• 1:1 matchings (“lunches”)

Is making a contribution to your company's community/sharing rewarded in some way?

• Yes

• Recognition at evaluations

• Kudos from peers and line manager
  ("we get kudos and are highlighted in executive rounds," "No, but the effort is recognized by Chapter head")

• You are more visible within the company
  ("helps me drive my personal brand")

• Part of my bonus is tied to it

• Scoring points for each session we participate in

• By getting the time to learn together during biz hours

• Gift cards for people going the extra mile on community work

• By the feeling that I'm giving back and doing good things for others.

• By having more clarity about my role

• By making these connections to external folks while getting them to talk at our events. Good for my personal brand and networking

• No

• And it is framed as mandatory

• "Just the benefit it gives you by being a better PM"

• "But it’s an opportunity to practice public speaking, teaching & coaching in a safe space. So I get rewarded by learning new things"

What are things that could be improved for your company's community?

• Too many "project" updates
  (“We tend to slip back into update mode and learning/reflecting always comes as the last part of our meetings.”)

• More small group/1:1 activities
  (“Would love to see more day to day reviews/pairings but we only meet in one large group.”)

• Too few people being the active drivers
  (“Much of the content is driven by one or two people, and we have more external speakers than internal. We don't talk enough about improving the craft.”)

• Input from outside of the company (“More external connections and speakers could be nice”)

• CoP Retros (“We are still fairly new as a product team. We only had a full team since December 2021, so still learning—but using regular retros as feedback loops would help.”)

• Complaint mode off (“Not only "complaining" but also getting into actions to change things”)

• More management attention (“Senior Leaders are not engaged and involved.”)

• Inclusivity (“There are several CoPs in our company. We just recently connected with the one on Data Analytics and I think we should do sessions like this more often.”)

• A good rhythm for events (“We are not in a smooth rhythm of sharing experiences”)

• In-person meetings (“We are still doing way too much online. In person community meetings are 10 times more valuable.”)

• Too top-down (“If our team lead is not organizing the sessions they get skipped.”)

• Boring, always the same format (“more participation, other formats beside talks”)

If you’re curious to learn more, find the high-level overview here and the detailed responses from cross-organizationalCoP participants here.