Introduction

Goal of this pages

I'd like to propose a way for structuring project wikis for the use in companies (I'll call this "company wikis" furthermore) with MoinMoin. Everyone is invited to discuss this ideas. I'd like to show also the benefits and lacks of the current MoinMoin system (my personal experience) which could lead to new feature requests maybe.

Why are company wikis sometimes not successful?

My experience is, that most people say about Wikis: "I like the idea. It's like Wikipedia, isn't it?". So everyone likes it. But if you install a wiki and provide it to the public only a few guys fill it with information, mostly glossary like stuff, cause also Wikipedia is used this way. People try to create an encyclopedia. But an encyclopedia like Wikipedia works only if there is some kind of "critical mass" of people writing into it. If this doesn't happen, people have no profit of it and they won't use it anymore.

• People are reluctant to it. They need to be taught how to use it. It needs people who promote it in the company and also actively use it all the time so others can see how to use it and start to like it.

• Even Wiki-Markup is too complicated for some people. Usability of the wiki has to be high, see e.g. ThemeMarket/SimpleMente for a try (e.g. renaming menue items, print support...). A welcome and starting page is a good idea, which tells the user, what to do (create homepage, learn about editing, learn subscribing a page etc.), see FeatureRequests/WelcomeNewUserPage. Hand-out a real, material cheat-sheet for wiki-markup to your users (at least supply one in the wiki), which is the essence of all the numerous help pages ("Wiki in a nutshell"). Create a WikiQuestions page,where users can ask questions. At the same time they should learn by that, how to subscribe to a page.

• Bad IT-infrastructure. Easy anywhere, anytime access is needed, especially via WLAN so that you can access the wiki also in meetings. Each meeting can have its own page, so you can take notes there, write who was there etc. Best use a standard page template for that. Also use this page prior to the meeting e.g. for finding the date of the meeting. Consider using SinglePageSlideShow or TaskPlanner.

The way I think, company wikis should be used

I tried to avoid this encyclopedia trap and informed myself about how wikis are successfully used in other companies by googling a little bit around: I was searching for success stories. My research showed the result, that most successful wikis are used for collaborative created documentation and also are used for project documentation. The last one is very interesting cause it offers a new approach:

In every project you have the situation that there is...

• a small group of people which is informed very well about the state of the project (at least they should be): the project leaders.
• a big group of people which is not informed very well about the state of the project: the project members
• a small group of people which are new to the project and want to get into it: the project newcomers
• a small group of people which are in the managment: the managers

A project wiki can now be used like this:

The project member wants "his project" to be successful (at least he should want that ). So he wants to get all information about it to be able to make it successful. The same also is true for the project newcomers.

The project leader(s) have this information and broadcast it by using the wiki. Thus the wiki is the only source where the informationn is stored, the users will visit the wiki a lot. Thus the project leaders are using the project wiki for their daily work (reporting progress, problems, decisions, creating management reports), the wiki is always up to date.

If later in the project a project newcomer joins the team, he can see the projects history and can get into the project very fast.

The wiki will be the "red line" of the project. It can be the place, where all tools and results come together and it also can document project drives on your network. You know the place where all word and pdf files are stored and where's the big mess after a few month ?

The wiki is no new tool in your companies tool chain. It should be the central spot of your project.

Structure of a good company wiki

Different audiences, different views

What should be presented in a project wiki

• minutes of meetings
  

  • use a template for that. The contents could be:
    • organisation header (topic, who invited, who participated, ...) use a table for that
    • heading for the minutes
    • heading for copies of your blackboard
    • heading for additional documents

    • add a category like "CategoryMeeting" on the bottom of your page. You can automatically list your meetings after that.

  • name your pages like this <year>-<month>-<day>_<topic> E.g. : 2009-08-26_Blablabla
    If you do so, you can search with the <<fullsearch>> macro. The minutes of meetings will be listed chronollogically.

• project summary
  • Goal of the project

  • environment and speciallities of the project (no money, no time ? )

  • project hierarchy (who is responsible for what)
  • sub projects
  • milestones
  • risks (with subpages)
  • current tasks (with sub pages)

• management project summary
  

  • parts of the project summary like described above + costs
• address book of external partners

• A section WikiPeople with the homepages of the users

• A central page WikiDates, which is subscirbed by all users

• Seperate pages for different organizational groups, taskforces
• A material section with all the company logos in different file formats, ms word templates ...
• ...
• Numerous page templates available / heavy use of page templates (including already different categories).

• Use of MonthCalendar / MacroMarket/EventAggregator / MacroMarket/EventCalendar

• ...

A company wiki with MoinMoin