Establishing a sustainable automation community of practice

Establishing a sustainable automation community of practice What is a community of practice? Real-world automation community of practice success Post-community of practice implementation outcomes Recommendations for your community of practice A unified automation platform Leadership sponsorship and resource commitment Designated team representation Organizational alignment and buy-in Implementation timeline Months 1–2: Foundation building Months 3–4: Joint execution and learning Months 5–6+: Maturing and scaling Ongoing expectations Additional resources Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform | Product Trial About the author Lee Armbuster More like this Blog post Blog post Blog post Keep exploring Browse by channel Automation Artificial intelligence Open hybrid cloud Security Edge computing Infrastructure Applications Virtualization Share A community of practice is a collaborative framework in which stakeholders across teams unify efforts to build automation capabilities. The community of practice fosters cross-functional communication, standardizes automation practices, and accelerates innovation through the sharing of knowledge, ideas, and lessons learned. It serves as a hub across disparate yet adjacent teams for the reuse of solutions and the development of consistent operational models. Note: The terms center of excellence, community of excellence, and community of practice are often used interchangeably within the industry. You can learn more about how Red Hat differentiates between a center of excellence and a community of practice in this blog. Regardless of terminology used, what's most important is to focus on the right approaches, activities, and outcomes. Recently, Red Hat partnered with a government organization to establish a structured automation community of practice that would unify automation efforts across disparate technical teams. Initial challenges Before the implementation of the community of practice, the organization experienced significant challenges due to a lack of standardization, including redundant automation development use cases, minimal cross-team collaboration and knowledge sharing, and increased time and budget costs associated with supporting multiple tools and frameworks. Once the community of practice was in place, designated representatives from different domains began meeting regularly to: Share automation progress, blockers, and lessons learned. Collaboratively troubleshoot and review each other’s work. Align on reusable automation content and development standards. Using the learnings from the government organization, you can establish your own automation communities of practice.