Corporate wikis

1. Corporate wikis Can a CEMS Wiki take root and flourish? Chris Wallace IS Research Seminar 7 February 2007 A wiki for CEMS

2. Agenda • The wiki idea • Some history of previous attempts • The CEMS wiki • Corporate wikis • Project issues • Research questions • Case study • The sickness reporting procedure A wiki for CEMS

3. A wiki world • The first wiki was developed by Ward Cunningham for the Object-Oriented Patterns community in 1994 • A wiki is a means of developing a hypertext ( as a network of web pages) quickly and collaboratively • Wikipedia is the best known public wiki – as of 23:00 on 6th Feb 2007 1,623,772 articles. • Please, grant me the serenity to accept the pages I cannot edit,The courage to edit the pages I can,And the wisdom to know the difference—The Wiki Prayer A wiki for CEMS

4. 1987? – Faculty handbook • Development • Project with Placement Student (Hugh O’Reilly) • Developed using HYPER a Dos-based hypertext system written by Tony Elston • Deployed on Admin intranet server • Outcome • Failed due to difficulty in updating A wiki for CEMS

5. 2003 – IS school wiki • Development • Subject was our understanding of information systems as an intellectual area. • Based on local installation • Outcome • Failed • little take-up • Topic too general A wiki for CEMS

6. May 2006 – Transparency • Development • started in wake of the ‘Student experience’ workshop with Margaret Needles and Katie Owen-Jones to capture brainstorm • Some updating • Recent additions in light of ISAG discussions • Outcome • stagnant A wiki for CEMS

7. July 2006 – web2.0 • Development • To support a Summer School and a workshop on web 2.0 • Updates ongoing • I insert links in teaching material when relevant • Outcome • A lot of overlap with much better resources in Wikipedia • Hard to know what Point of View (POV) this wiki is adding • Works for me better than editing my web pages A wiki for CEMS

8. August 2006 – Student Advisor wiki • Development • Started by me as project leader for FOLD • Domain – glossary and FAQs for incoming (and current students) • Software – hosted stikipad (small charge) • Outcome • Editing ongoing by Alison Eastwood, Carol Symonds and placement students but not generally editable • Wiki not directly browsed - content exported and imported into FOLD • Issues • a few functionality problems - search • users need to be set up • dependence on external host • Import is an overhead and reduces functionality further • Future • Exported to the CEMS wiki • Is this now too much for an applicant ? • Is there a need to separate staff and student wikis or are we all in one Faculty A wiki for CEMS

9. Jan 2006 CEMS wiki • Perceived need to capture CEMS specific knowledge of • Terminology – module code • Software and its usage • E.g. which version of PHP is on which server • How are students advised to use it in CEMS • What shareable teaching material exists • Student and Staff process descriptions • Existing information systems • E.g. overview of what DOMUS is for • Help pages for FOLD • Interface descriptions • ‘Portholes’ to other groups in UWE – ITS, Personnel, library which describe the interface – who to contact about what, what data flows etc – editable from both sides. A wiki for CEMS

10. Media wiki features • Access control • Public read access • LDAP authentication for editors • Access Control for admin users • Linking • Page links are page titles • Internal and external page links • Editing • Wiki markup • Simple page creation • Talk page • Edit history • Version comparison • Watch list • Structuring • Categories • Orientation pages • Implementation • Open source PHP/MySQL A wiki for CEMS

11. Enterprise wikis • Features • Better access control • Multiple wiki domains • Examples include • SocialText • hosted or open source • no LDAP • Confluence • Commercial license • Dan Dixon is expert A wiki for CEMS

12. Research findings • Majchrzak, Wagner and Yates • Top benefits • Improving work processes, collaboration and knowledge reuse • Success factors for benefits • Believing there is a need for collaboration • Believing others have credible knowledge to contribute • User types • Adder – creating ne content • Synthesizer – organising and restructuring • Multiplexer – super contributers • Minimalist – minor corrections • Lurkers – read but no contribution A wiki for CEMS

13. Project questions • What can be done to encourage success and mitigate the risks of failure? • How to develop a collaborative culture? • How many wikis do we need? • What access policy to implement? • How does a wiki compare with a CMS like Plone or SharePoint? • Do we need a Corporate wiki – with about 2000 users? A wiki for CEMS

14. Research Questions • What are the success factors for a wiki in an organisation? In a University? • Have wikis already been superseded by better ways of gathering and representing organisational knowledge? • How to manage the dialectic between informal textual information and structured, computable data? i.e. the Wiki/FOLD boundary • Personal communication habits seem very resilient to change – how (and should) can we adapt faster. A wiki for CEMS

15. Reading • Tapsell and Williams, Wikinomics (2006) http://www.wikinomics.com/book/index.php • Espen Anderson, Using Wikis in a Corporate Context • http://www.espen.com/papers/Andersen-2005-corpwikis.pdf • Anne Majchrzak, Christian Wagner and Dave Yates, Corporate Wiki Users: Results of a Survey Proceedings of the 2006 international symposium on Wikis, 2006, ACM http://www.wikisym.org/ws2006/proceedings/p99.pdf A wiki for CEMS