RE: Anyone using Wiki for collaboration?

[Megan Golding <mgolding -at- secureworks -dot- com>]

On Tue, 2002-04-16 at 10:54, Nuckols, Carl wrote:
> I gather requirements and write the
>  user manuals in an FDA regulated software development environment, so
> we need documentation that is a little more 'official' than Wiki.  Wiki
> has, however, been very effective just for the reason you mentioned.
>  

For informal documentation, I'm loving this Wiki thing. I can jot things
down and anyone who's interested can pull up the page.

My next step, however, is to figure out how to merge the formal
documentation and informal Wiki together. I can add attachments to pages
in Wiki. This may be helpful for posting new versions of documents in
PDF or HTML formats.

>  It has proven to be invaluable for gathering and refining requirements
> from  marketing, sales, tech service, etc. as we go along and the learning
> curve has been quite short.  Perhaps more importantly, by having the
> requirements on Wiki, it is much easier to get the software developers to look at
> them early and point out anything that is impossible/impractical.  I can
> then go back to the 'users' and find other solutions before coding begins.
>  

Ooh -- outstanding point. Requirements gathering is an ugly process.
Keeping up with the latest requirements list is impractical for an
individual. As long as we're disciplined, I think we can use our Wiki
for requirements.

One method of organization I saw on the TWiki web site was to use topics
such as "NewSuggestions", "InProgress", "OnHold", etc. to specify where
in the development cycle particular ideas were. Links to individual
ideas/projects are kept on one page and moved to the appropriate page
when their statuses change.

>  >My first reaction to said co-worker was, "Hey, that's not where this
>  information goes.
>  >You should have said it this way. You should have linked from _here_."
>  
>  Like you I cringed at first, but I now love Wiki.  

> Another nice feature to note is the fact that Wiki automatically 
> tracks changes.  

Yes! My home page is now the WebChanges page for my wiki. The topics are
listed in reverse chronological order, so I can get current on stuff in
a very short time.

> It does not say who made the change, which may be a drawback for 
> some, but I can come in every morning and in the span of 15 minutes
> know what was added/changed the day before.

On TWiki, which I set up internally, I turned on authentication, using
Apache's Basic Authentication feature. It wasn't bad and now I can track
who made the last change to a page, etc. The feature was pretty easy to
set up and well-documented, I might add.
  
Thanks, Carl, for your comments on how you use Wiki for collaboration.
In particular, I think the requirements gathering suggestions are very
useful.

Meg

-- 

Megan Golding (mgolding -at- secureworks -dot- net)
SecureWorks, Inc.

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
	-- Timothy Leary



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