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advances in CoP methodology is to take it from small-team interaction
to large-group intervention, although some dispute whether this can be
effectively done at all. There have been some experiments where up to 300
people were brought together within a CoP to work through organiza-
tional issues. While it would be unusual for a software engineering effort
to be of such proportions, it would not be out of the question to have to
develop a system where team members and stakeholders together came
close to this number.
There are a variety of CoP-based designs for groups of this size. The
World Café is perhaps the most well known and popular of these designs,
which also includes Open Space Technology, Participative Design, and
Wisdom Circles.
The World Café (www.theworldcafe.com) describes its process this way:
It is an innovative yet simple methodology for hosting conversations.
These conversations link and build on each other as people move between
groups, cross-pollinate ideas, and discover new insights into the questions
and issues raised. As a process, the World Café can evoke and make visible
the collective intelligence of any group, thus increasing people's capacity
for effective action in pursuit of a common aim.
In a face-to-face environment, the way to do this is quite simple. Tables
are provided where a series of conversational rounds, lasting from 20 to
45 minutes, are held to tackle a specific question. Participants are encour-
aged to write, doodle, or draw key ideas and themes on the tablecloths, as
shown in Figure 4.12. At the end of each round, one person remains at the
table as the host, while the others travel to new tables. The hosts welcome
the newcomers and share the table's conversation so far. The newcomers
share what they discussed from the tables they've already visited. And so
on. After the last round, participants return to their individual tables to
integrate all of this information. At the end of the session, everyone shares
and explores emerging themes, insights, and learning. This serves to cap-
ture the collective intelligence of the whole (Raelin 2008).
A visit to the World Café's website demonstrates how they have
modified this construct to suit the online environment. One of the
outputs of this sort of brainstorming session might be a tag cloud,
which is a visual depiction of user-generated tags based on discus-
sions. Tags are usually single words and are normally listed alphabeti-
cally, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or colors, as
shown in Figure 4.13.
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