Glossary
What is a community of practice?
A community of practice is a group of people who share a craft or problem and improve by learning from each other.
In more detail
The term comes from Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's 1991 book Situated Learning, and Wenger later described three parts every community of practice has. A domain: the shared area of work, such as design systems or nursing education. A community: people who talk, help each other and build trust. And a practice: the shared stock of methods, stories, tools and answers the group builds over time.
The practice is the part most groups lose. People meet, swap tips, and move on, but the tips are not kept anywhere. A community of practice that writes things down gets better each year. One that does not keeps solving the same problems.
Common examples: an internal guild of engineers across teams, alumni of a training program, maintainers of related open-source projects, or event organizers in the same city.
Example
Design systems guildHow it differs from a team or an audience
| Team | Community of practice | Audience | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Held together by | A shared delivery goal | A shared craft or problem | Interest in one source |
| Membership | Assigned | Chosen, open to newcomers | Anyone who follows |
| Who teaches | A manager or lead | Everyone, in turns | The source only |
| What lasts | The product | The shared practice and answers | The content published |
Good practice
Small habits that make the difference.
Name the domain in one line
"People who run cohort programs" is clear. "Growth" is not. A clear domain tells newcomers whether they belong.
Give newcomers a real first step
A welcome thread with three starter questions works better than "introduce yourself".
Rotate who teaches
Invite members to host office hours or a short session. Teaching is how the practice spreads.
Keep the practice somewhere findable
Answers, templates and recordings should live in one searchable place, not in someone's DMs.
How Dium handles it
In Dium, a Flow is the home for one community. Related Flows can share a Room so members and DMs carry across, and profile types let you mark mentors, newcomers or speakers with their own permissions.
Related terms
Knowledge base
A searchable collection of answers a group has already worked out, kept so people can look them up instead of asking again.
Read definitionProfile type
A profile type is a custom role in a community, such as speaker or mentor, that sets what its members can see, create and join.
Read definitionOffice hours
Office hours are a recurring, open time slot when an expert is available to answer whatever people bring to them.
Read definition