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This is the keynote presentation for the Peninsula Linux Users' Group (PenLUG) on 23 Oct 2003.

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Slide 1: Web Collaboration with TWiki



Writeable webs empower employees to share knowledge and to be more productive



Keynote Presentation for Peninsula Linux Users' Group (PenLUG) on 23 Oct 2003



-- Peter@ThoenyPLEASENOSPAM.com

Slide 2: Agenda

  • Introduction
  • Challenges of Intranets, Distributed Teams, CMS
  • What is knowledge?
  • What is a Wiki? What is TWiki?
  • Highlights & limitations of TWiki
  • Advanced Features, Web Applications
  • Initial Deployment
  • Collaboration Issues
  • Case Study Wind River
  • Summary
  • Questions & Answers

Slide 3: About Peter

  • Peter Thoeny - Peter@ThoenyPLEASENOSPAM.com
  • Software developer with over 15 years experience, with interests in corporate collaboration, web technology and UI design
  • Author of the open source collaboration software TWiki, managed the project over the last four years
  • Graduate of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich
  • Lived in Japan for 8 years working as an engineering manager for Denso, the largest auto electric parts supplier in Japan
  • Now in the Silicon Valley for 5 years, managing the Engineering Operations group at Wind River

Slide 4: Introduction

  • Knowledge intensive companies face these challenges:
    • How to keep Intranet content up-to-date
    • How to best share knowledge among teams
  • TWiki is a leading open-source, web based collaboration platform addressing these questions
  • This talk explains what TWiki is, its history, how it is used, and how to get involved with TWiki in order to be better informed and more productive.

Slide 5: Challenges of Intranets

  • Some content is outdated
  • The quantity is limited
  • Difficult to find content; inconsistent
  • Special tools and knowledge required to maintain
  • Content is static, it has a "one webmaster syndrome":
    If I discover a page on the Intranet that has incorrect or insufficient information, I just ignore it because I am too busy to find out who the webmaster is and to write an e-mail requesting an update

Slide 6: Challenges of Distributed Teams

  • Open questions:
    • How to get a virtual team working together efficiently?
    • How to get everyone in sync?
    • How to avoid duplicate efforts?
  • Typical answers:
    • Scheduled conference calls
    • Occasional visits
    • Shared drives
    • Exchange documents by e-mail
    • Instant Messaging (IRC, AIM, ICQ, etc)

Slide 7: Challenges of Distributed Teams (cont.)

  • Issues with e-mail and mailing lists:
    • E-mail gets lost after some time
    • Search is limited to email client
    • Great for discussion, but ... hard to find 'final consensus' on a thread
    • E-mail is not hyper-linked and is not structured, content can't easily be grouped into related topics
    • E-mail and attachments are not version controlled, e.g. it is difficult to determine the history of a document

Slide 8: Challenges of CMS

  • Rigid structure (can be good and bad)
  • Control over content more important than free form knowledge sharing
  • Content is typically structured hierarchically or in table format, with limited cross-linking between pages
  • Limited support for unstructured content, or content that has "structure and exceptions"

Slide 9: What is Knowledge? How can it be Fostered?

  • Knowledge: The sum of what is known : the body of truth, information, and principles acquired by mankind
  • Can knowledge be managed? Von Krogh, Nonaka and Ichijo in Enabling Knowledge Creation, ISBN:0195126165, believe that knowledge can only be enabled
    • Management in the sense that you cannot force someone to innovate. We can only create an environment where knowledge can be created
  • Five key knowledge enablers:
    1. Instill a knowledge vision
    2. Manage conversations
    3. Mobilize knowledge activists
    4. Create the right context for knowledge creation
    5. Globalize local knowledge

Slide 10: What is a Wiki?

  • WikiWiki = Writeable Web
    • As quick to contribute as e-mail,
    • as easy to use as a website
  • Ward Cunningham implemented the original WikiWiki in 1995 to collaborate on software patterns
  • Inspired by HyperCard
  • Design principles:
    • Open - Should a page be found to be incomplete or poorly organized, any reader can edit it as they see fit.
    • Incremental - Pages can cite other pages, including pages that have not been written yet.
    • Organic - The structure and text content of the site is open to editing and evolution.

Slide 11: What is a Wiki? (cont.)

  • The original WikiWiki has these features:
    • Every page can be edited, using just a browser
    • Read-write web, every page can be edited using just a browser
    • HTML form based editing
    • Pages are served dynamically
    • Pages are linked automagically with WikiWords
    • Simple markup, no need to learn HTML
  • Over 100 Wiki engines based on the original Wiki idea, mostly open source

Slide 12: What is TWiki?

  • TWiki started as a Wiki engine, but has outgrown its roots and is now a platform for web applications
  • Mission: "TWiki is a leading-edge, web-based collaboration platform targeting the corporate intranet world. TWiki fosters information flow within an organization; lets distributed teams work together seamlessly and productively; and eliminates the one-webmaster syndrome of outdated intranet content."
  • Open Source software (GPL), hosted at http://TWiki.org/

Slide 13: What is TWiki? (cont.)

  • A Wiki in the original sense, but also:
  • A shared notebook for projects: Repository, scheduling, meetings
  • A departmental collaboration tool: Processes, project reviews, QA tracking
  • An Intranet publishing tool: IT, HR, ISO standards
  • A CMS with focus on free-form collaboration: Requirements capture
  • A knowledge base: Problem/solution pairs with attached patches
  • A platform to create web based applications like news portals, inventory systems, issues tracking systems

Slide 14: Who is using TWiki?

Slide 15: Who is developing TWiki?

Slide 16: Highlights: Web Environment

Slide 17: Highlights: Interactive Environment

  • Add and refactor content - "Share Knowledge"
    • Vs. posting e-mails
  • Notification of changes:
    • Get notified of page changes by e-mail or RSS feed
    • A way to keep everybody in synch
    • Also a way to check content by senior engineers
  • Peer review for up to date content:
    • Fix a posting that is inaccurate or insufficient

Slide 18: Highlights: WikiWords for Linking

  • Easy to create hyperlinks within TWiki pages, just use a WikiWord
  • WikiWords are capitalized words, run together, e.g. WebCollaboration, IntranetTools
  • To create a link, edit the page and type:
    • For more info, see IntranetTools
  • If the 'IntranetTools' page exists, it is turned automatically into a link:

Slide 19: Highlights: Creating New Pages

  • First, edit the page where you want to spin off a new page, and type in some text including a WikiWord for the new page. You will get:
    • For more info, see IntranetServices?.
  • The '?' is a link (to a page that doesn't exist, yet)
  • Now, to create the IntranetServices page, click on this link, type in some text and preview / save it
  • If you return to original page and hit Refresh, the link now covers the whole WikiWord:

Slide 20: Highlights: WikiSyntax for Content

  • WikiSyntax
    • Content is more important than nice formatting
      • "Think e-mail"
    • Formatting is simple
    • Easy to learn
  • What about HTML?
    • TWiki renders HTML
    • Better practice to use TWiki syntax, easier to maintain by other users

Slide 21: Highlights: Version Control

  • Pages are under revision control:
    • See previous page revisions
      • Click on the r1.4 type links at bottom of page
    • See differences between revisions
      • Click on the Diffs link at bottom of page
    • See who changed what and when.
  • 'Soft Security' - anyone can change anything, but changes are logged
  • Complete audit trail, even for meta data like access control

Slide 22: Highlights: Access Control

Slide 23: Highlights: Preferences Settings

  • Three level of preferences settings:
    • TWikiPreferences: Site-level settings
      • Example: Site name, proxy settings, access control, skin
    • WebPreferences in each web: Web-level settings
      • Example: Web specific access control, navigation links, colors
    • In each user's home page, e.g. TWikiGuest: User-level settings
      • Example: Edit box size, preferred skin

Slide 24: Limitations of TWiki

  • Is a purely web based environment. This has the following implications:
  • The editor is simply an HTML form; browser editors are primitive
    • Some browsers allow you to launch your preferred editor, like w3m on Unix
  • Non WYSIWYG editing; nevertheless rich text can be created using a very simple markup language (WikiSyntax)
    • Type: Make text *bold* and =fixed=
    • Get:  Make text bold and fixed

Slide 25: Resources for Learning TWiki

  • It takes 20 minutes to learn TWiki essentials and start sharing knowledge!

Slide 26: Advanced Features

  • TWiki skins
  • TWiki variables
  • Server side includes
  • TWiki forms
  • Formatted search
  • Plugins
  • Plugin API

Slide 27: Advanced: TWiki Skins

  • TWikiSkins change the look of a TWiki topic, for example the layout of the header and footer
  • Rendered text between header and footer does not change
  • You can also use skins to define an alternate view, like a view optimized for printing
  • Separation of program logic, look and content
  • Many SkinPackages available for download at TWiki.org

Slide 28: Advanced: TWiki Variables

  • TWikiVariables are text strings - %VARIABLE% - that expand into content whenever a page is opened
  • There are predefined variables like %RED% and
    %GMTIME{"$day $month, $year"}%
  • There are preferences variables like %EDITBOXHEIGHT%
  • You can also define custom variables, with new names and values

Slide 29: Advanced: Server Side Includes

Slide 30: Advanced: TWiki Forms

  • Use TWikiForms to add form-based input to free-form content, e.g. you can structure topics with unlimited, easily searchable categories
  • A form is defined in a topic - (DB table definition)
  • Forms can be attached to topics - (DB table row)
  • The form appears in edit mode, and the contents are rendered as a table when viewing the actual page

Slide 31: Advanced: Formatted Search

  • Use FormattedSearch to generate customized reports in list format or table format
  • Typically used to list topics with attached form data
  • Report is embedded in a page with a %SEARCH{...}% variable
  • Examples:

Slide 32: Advanced: TWiki Plugins

  • You type:
    | *Region:* | *Sales:* |
    | Northeast |  320 |
    | Northwest |  580 |
    | South     |  240 |
    | Total: |  %CALC{"$SUM($ABOVE())"}% |
  • You get:
    Region: Sales:
    Northeast 320
    Northwest 580
    South 240
    Total: 1140

Slide 33: Advanced: Plugin API and Plugin Internals

  • A TWikiPlugin is composed of a Perl module that gets installed on the server and a topic with help and Plugin configuration
  • A Plugin implements callbacks that extend the functionality of TWiki
  • An API for TWikiPlugins provides the specifications for hooking into the core TWiki code from your external Perl Plugin module

Slide 34: Web Applications

  • The basic feature set of TWiki can be used to implement web applications
  • We look at two examples:
    • TWiki Installation Directory
    • Workflow system to track features and bugs of TWiki
  • Use/create Plugins for more advanced applications

Slide 35: Web App: TWiki Installation Directory

Slide 36: Web Application: Feature Tracking

Slide 37: Initial Deployment

  • Install TWiki on web server
  • Plan rollout and content
    • Pain killer vs vitamins
  • Build initial structure
  • Populate initial content with help from early adopters
  • Initial rollout with smaller group
  • Train and coach users
  • Do not underestimate inertia and time

Slide 38: Collaboration Issues

  • 'Don't Touch' syndrome
    • Looks like a 'proper website'
    • 'Better not touch it, John Smith owns that page'
  • Shared knowledge vs. 'Owners' - "I don't want to edit someone else's page"
    • DONE Wiki culture: nobody 'owns' pages, and any change can be built upon.
    • DONE First person to create page is *not* the owner!
  • 'No control' syndrome - "This leads to chaos"
    • Nightmare of DB admin; perceived as disruptive by upper management
    • DONE Soft security and audit trail

Slide 39: Collaboration Issues (cont.)

  • Effort - "It takes too much time to contribute"
    • DONE Save time by doing less e-mail, and finding critical info quicker
    • DONE Learn new technology and share by taking notes on TWiki
  • TWiki syntax - "yet another language"
    • DONE TWiki is e-mail, e.g. just *do it*
    • DONE Use the help pages, doesn't take long to learn
  • E-mail Habit - "I prefer e-mail"
    • DONE E-mail doesn't scale - new people, new technology, new customers, new partners...
  • Network infrastructure - "I'm not always connected"
    • Collaboration assumes constant network access

Slide 40: Case Study Wind River: Initial deployment

  • Wind River started a large software project in spring 2000, involving around 100 engineers located in 7 offices on two continents
  • Evaluated two web based products to keep track of teams, schedules, milestones, meeting minutes, code reviews, and to store all project related documents:
    • eRoom: Was in use by merged company ISI
    • TWiki: Was in use by acquired company TakeFive
  • Decided for TWiki because it was more flexible and configurable than eRoom, even though eRoom had a more polished UI and more out-of-box applications

Slide 41: Case Study Wind River: Build and Coach

  • Initial time was spent to compile the requirements with key stakeholders, and to build the content structure
  • Gave virtual trainings for each office on collaboration, with focus more on "pros and cons of e-mail, webmaster maintained Intranets, and TWiki based collaboration", and "why it pays off using online collaboration"
  • Coached employees by monitoring content and sending "collaboration hints"

Slide 42: Case Study Wind River: Growing Up

  • Other groups within the company started using TWiki after seeing how projects can be managed in TWiki
  • A big push in TWiki usage happened after the Corporate Council started using TWiki to document their initiatives, metrics and processes
  • Several skins have been created in the familiar Wind River Intranet look
  • The Intranet home is now a TWiki driven news portal
  • Large deployment:
    • 1300 registered users
    • 100 webs, 33K pages
    • 140K actions / month
    • 13K updates / month

Slide 43: Summary

  • TWiki is a powerful platform for web collaboration
  • Free form content and content with structure where needed
  • Easy to share knowledge online
  • Careful coaching is needed
  • Viral growth after people "get it"
  • TWiki is a platform to build web-based applications efficiently

Slide 44: Questions & Answers




Slide 45: References

Notes

-- PeterThoeny - 23 Oct 2003

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TopicClassification TWikiAdvocacy
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RelatedTopics TWikiAdvocacy, TWikiPresentation20May2003, TWikiDeployment
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Topic revision: r4 - 01 Jun 2005 - 06:24:32 - PeterThoeny
 
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