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Four Organizational Shifts in Agile Transformation — Shift 2 From Formal Committees to Communities of Practice
Organizational agile transformation involves four major shifts. The change from formal committees to communities of practice is the second shift.
Formal committees and communities of practice play the same type of role in an organization. They are both made of delegates who collaborate in a transversal way. People from similar functions but situated in different parts of the organization are collected to help make decisions on certain issues or serve certain purposes. However, formal committees serve better in situations that require a lot of preparations and involve a certain level of details, formal recommendations, and decision makings with supporting evidences; whereas communities of practice serve better in situations where the activities involved require harmonized collaborations, continuous learning and improvements with mistakes being made from time to time. Currently, in many organizations, formal committees are the transversal structure by default and cover the problems that should be better addressed by communities of practice. That’s why there is the need of the shift from formal committees to communities of practice, although the purpose is not to replace formal committees entirely.
