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Using Community Tools To Improve Team Work

Using Community Tools To Improve Team Work. Magnus Einarsson. Background. New team Distributed development Many team members lacked experience in the problem domain Implementation of system for a platform new to all team members Lots of competence build up

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Using Community Tools To Improve Team Work

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  1. Using Community Tools To Improve Team Work Magnus Einarsson

  2. Background • New team • Distributed development • Many team members lacked experience in the problem domain • Implementation of system for a platform new to all team members • Lots of competence build up • Large amount of information collected • Resources change during project • Few experts in team

  3. Needs • Effectively build up the competence in the team • Collect information about platform/application etc • Effective communication between team members • Preferably including • Real-time communication • Multi party communication • Presence information

  4. The tools that helped us reach our goals • Internal instant messaging server based on Jabber/XMPP • Wiki system for information collection

  5. Picture from http://www.oddmuse.org What is a Wiki • A wiki is a collaborative web application which allows users to edit content • Uses simplified Wikimarkup instead of HTML • Anybody can edit thepages • Revision control

  6. Enterprise Wiki vs. traditional project web sites • Traditional intranet website • Webmaster maintained • Where is the source document • Who can update it • Threshold to get content updated • Static • Often outdated information • Wiki • If you can access the information you have the tool needed to add more information • Easy to publish information • Change tracking/audit trail • Integrated searching

  7. Wiki uses in a project • Knowledgebase • Sharing a project notebook • Tracking • Sprint backlog • Features • Milestones/Sprints • Meeting minutes • Sharing collected documentation • Listing customer contact • Keeping track of test results

  8. Wiki Experiences • Start easy • Use simple tools • Prioritize information contribution before appearance and fancy features • Encourage contribution • When you help someone, make them document the problem and the solution in the wiki • After a while you can answer most questions with – “It´s in the Wiki!”

  9. Features needed to make a Wiki suitable for enterprise usage • Access control • Partitioning of information • Good search • Change tracking/traceability • Attachments • Nice to have • Support for archiving mail • Integration with IM system • Headline news • Recent changes • Announcements

  10. Instant Messaging – How it started • Individual team members used private IM accounts (ICQ, AIM, MSN) • Not acceptable - we need to keep the information inside company network • Deployed IRC server • Successfully used to create channels for small groups working on specific problem • But people still relied on public systems for one-one communications and presence • We needed our own IM system

  11. IM Solution • We deployed an internal IM system based on Jabber/XMPP • Open standard for IM systems • Several server and client implementations available • Supports all important IM services • Presence • One-one communication • Multi user communication • File transfers • Encryption • Servers can be connected using encrypted channels

  12. Leverage the IM infrastructure • Leverage the presence information • Assign trouble reports to present team members • No need to run/call around to find out who is available • The IM system can also extended by using agents/bots • Notify team about events • Test results • System outages • Issue handling system knows who is present • Monitoring

  13. Experiences • The IM system is a very good complement to using e-mail and phone. • Pace of a phone conversation • Capable of transporting error logs and screen captures that is often associated with discussions in a test or development project. • IM system very good for • Cooperation to solve problems • Finding someone available to help you • Drawbacks • Lots of good information might be lost => Turn on logging in clients

  14. Resources • Wiki systems • Oddmuse http://www.oddmuse.org • Mediawiki http://www.mediawiki.org • Confluence http://www.atlassian.com/confluence • TWiki http://www.twiki.org • Jabber/XMPP information • Everything about Jabber/XMPP http://www.jabber.org • Wildfire server and Spark client http://www.jivesoftware.org • Original Jabber implementation http://jabberd.org/

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