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On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 1:19 PM, Phillips, Wanda
<wanda -dot- phillips -at- philips -dot- com> wrote:
> We also have a wiki, but I find that the wiki is used more as a broadcast system, whereas the in-house lists are used for discussions.
Interesting concept.
> What are other groups doing out there with the tools available? Are you in a position to introduce tools?
Anyone can recommend tools. I would sense that the user adoption
depends greatly on:
1) Support of the IT department
2) Integration into current processes
3) Ease of use by team members
4) Training
5) Cost
6) Understanding of tool methodologies
As a communicator, we tend to focus on #6 first. We desire to know why
a wiki should be used over a forum, and build our recommendations
around that. However, IT is more interested in being able to support
the tools with their limited resources when the one who introduced the
tool is no longer at the company.
I have this problem right now, where we use an open source wiki
throughout Engineering, but Sharepoint on the business processes side.
I have nothing against Sharepoint for its easy file management,
project tracking, and Office suite integration, but its wiki is no
match for other wiki varieties. For the teams I support, it seems to
be an all-or-nothing scenario: ALL file system, or ALL wiki.
I'm not sure why a wiki would be used as a broadcast system. I would
use more of a blogging system that handled dated releases to broadcast
news to an enterprise. This way previous releases are archived.
Earlier, someone mentioned tracking a wiki on three levels: "Official
Process", "Under Review", and "Off the top of my head"... I'm hoping
to bring this up in a discussion about tools. A wiki provides open,
real-time collaboration, where documents are single user focused
(until Google Docs, Office Live, or Office 2010 become more standard
practices). Linden Labs uses their wiki to author and serve their
online help documentation for Second Life. Awesome presentation from
STC Summit 2010.
A discussion forum is good for threading discussions, but somewhere
down the line someone has to decide the official process, archive the
discussion notes, and move forward. This way users won't have to read
the entire discussion thread to find out what they have to do _NOW_.
Wikis have "talk" pages, and comment plugins, that we can use to
provide discussion flow on a topic. Then we need to add a process to
clear the conversations and draft official process.
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through multiple channels. Your choice of authoring (and import)
formats with virtually any output. Try Doc-To-Help free for 30-days. http://www.doctohelp.com/
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