Notes from 57th International STC Conference
Dallas, Texas, May 2-5, 2010

Designing for Collaboration: Managing Projects with a Wiki

Nicky Bleiel and Stewart Nader

Bleiel and Nader are project managers with Component One and Social Media Group, respectively.

Session Description: This session demonstrated—live—how to quickly structure, populate, and manage projects with a wiki. It shows how to use a wiki in lieu of e-mail and spreadsheets for a more streamlined approach to management.

• How a wiki can help you within project management: to rethink existing practices.
• Used user resistance to a new milk jug design as a metaphor to the difficulty of getting people to accept change.
• Presentation was set up based on a Ten Elements structure
   
• Element 1. Distributed team hub: for virtual team projects over distance
• Element 2: Persistent counterpart: info (content) always available
• Element 3: Separating content and communication: built-in to wiki structure
• Element 4: Overpaid security guard: share as much as you can; restrict only what needs to be private
• Element 5: Participation builds stature
• Element 6: Onboarding: work hub, top 10 list, profile page (photos, bios of team members), incentives. Used airline metaphor; the quicker you get your new people “in the air,” the more productive they will be = $.
• Element 7: Policies and procedures: posting company policies and procedures online with review/comment feature makes updates much easier
• Element 8: Structure: Coordinate shared work.
• Element 9: Make meetings more productive.
• Element 10: Reusable knowledge base.
• Wiki vs. SharePoint? Issue with SharePoint: it has significant capabilities, but it requires a great deal of customization. It’s designed for IT to handle, so both the upfront cost and the maintenance cost are greater than are wikis and other collaborative work platforms. SharePoint 2010 has a more robust wiki function built in.
• Managing projects: Example 1. The speaker explained how he used a wiki to write a book about wikis, wikipatterns.
• Example 2: Welcome to the Matrix Solutions Wiki. It improved cross-communication among functions.
• Example 3: Social Media Group. Recent Activity, Spaces, Your Tasks, Status Updates (Twitter-type comments).