This is the material for a 40 minute talk on "Structured Wikis at Work - Enterprise 2.0 in Action" at People-ontheGo Webinar, 2010-02-25.
Abstract: A wiki enables teams to organize and share content and knowledge in an organic and free manner, and to schedule, manage and document their daily activities. Learn from the founder of TWiki, the leading open source enterprise wiki what exactly a wiki is, and how you can use it to enhance the communications within your organization and between organizations. Learn also how a structured wiki can bring Enterprise 2.0 into the workplace.
How Structured Wikis bring Enterprise 2.0 into the Workplace
Wiki, a writable web: Communities can share content and organize it in a way most meaningful and useful to them
If extended with the right set of functionality, a wiki can be applied to the workplace to schedule, manage, document, and support daily activities
A structured wiki combines the benefits of a wiki and a database application
This talk explains basic wikis and structured wiki, covers its deployment, and shows some sample applications using TWiki, an open source enterprise collaboration platform
CTO and co-founder of Twiki Inc, the Enterprise Agility company
Founder of TWiki, the open source wiki for the enterprise, managing the project for 12 years
Invented the concept of structured wikis - where free form wiki content can be structured with tailored wiki applications
Recognized thought-leader in wikis and social software, featured in numerous articles and technology conferences including LinuxWorld, Business Week, Wall Street Journal and more
Wikis solve some of the limitations of existing collaboration software:
Maintenance of static intranets
Taming internal e-mail flood
Implementation of business processes
Slide 34: Challenges of Static Intranets
Some content is outdated
Incomplete content
When was the page last updated?
Difficult to find content
Inconsistency across departments
Special tools, knowledge and permission required to maintain
Content is static, it has a "webmaster syndrome": If an employee discovers a page with incorrect or insufficient information, the employee will often ignore it because it takes too much time to find out who the webmaster is and to write an e-mail requesting an update
Slide 35: Wikis and Static Intranets
Move some/all Intranet content into a wiki
No difference for readers to browse and search content
Employees are empowered to fix content on the spot
Ease of maintenance
No need to install client side software
Consistent look & feel
Paradigm shift
from: webmasters maintain content
to: domain experts and casual users maintain content
Slide 36: Challenges of E-mail
E-mail and mailing lists are great, but:
Post and reply vs. post and refine/refactor
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 be grouped easily into related topics
E-mail and attachments are not version controlled and it is difficult to determine the history of a document
Not all interested people / too many people in the loop
Pockets of knowledge made available to interested parties
Audit trail / domain experts
Paradigm shift
from: post & reply
to: post & refine & cross-link
Send e-mail with link to content instead of content itself
Slide 38: Challenges of Business Processes
Business processes are implemented in large scale by IT department (Sarbanes-Oxley compliance etc.)
Teams follow formal/informal workflow to accomplish tasks, which is often a paper-based process (rolling out laptops to employees etc.)
No resources allocated to implement applications to automate these processes; IT department has no bandwidth to implement lightweight applications for a variety of teams
Slide 39: Wikis and Business Processes
A structured wiki is a flexible tool to support evolving processes
in the free-form wiki way -- linked pages, collaboratively maintained
and with a structured wiki application -- forms, queries, reports
Content contributors with moderate skill sets can build web applications
Paradigm shift
from: programmers create applications
to: all of us can build applications
Slide 40: Requirements for a Wiki at the Workplace
Version control -- audit trail
Access control -- security
File attachments -- document management
Ease of use -- productivity
Ease of administration -- productivity
Feature set -- create web applications
API -- integration with existing enterprise applications
Scalability -- room to grow
Support -- get help when needed
Slide 41: Role of Wiki Champion
A wiki champion is a person who:
understands the process of the work for a given project or business (the domain), and
knows how to use a wiki (best practices in collaboration)
The wiki champion is coaching the employees
Advocate, important role especially in the initial phase of a wiki
Typically a part time role
As the wikis gets larger and grows laterally, new wiki champions emerge
Slide 42: Initial Deployment of a Wiki
Plan content and rollout
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
Expect quick growth after slow start
Example: Wind River's wiki has now 120K pages and 20K page changes / month
Slide 43: To Click on "Edit" or not to Click
Slide 44: Be Aware of Mental Barriers
Wikis can be intimidating; the wiki pages appear "official" and corporate
Overcome your own internal resistance to edit existing content
Paradigm shift: Content is owned by team, not individual
I want my contributions to be near "perfect"
It is more effective to post content early and let the team provide feedback and revise it iteratively
Slide 45: Wikis are Fun
Wikis are easy to use
Even people with moderate skill sets can build great content
Wikis are quick
Wikis change as your workflow changes
Slide 46: Summary
A structured wiki is a powerful platform for web collaboration
Collaborate in free form; add structure as needed
Use it as shared notebooks, a departmental collaboration tool, a publishing tool, a CMS and a knowledge base
Use it as a platform to create lightweight applications