research.ibm

1. Building Trust in an Enterprise WikiCatalina Danis1 and David Singer21 Social Computing Group, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center2 Almaden Information Services, IBM Almaden Research Center www.research.ibm.com

2. The problem • IBM’s Research Division consists of about 3000 individuals in nine locations in five countries on three continents • Plus remote workers • Two main stakeholder groups shape the research agenda: • Strategists and senior managers who make funding decisions • Researchers who propose and execute the research • Management and Strategists have a Lotus Notes database used to create the annual research agenda but… • It is not updated during the year and is created afresh annually • Most Researchers do not have access to this database • There is, in fact, no single place where Researchers can find complete information on the current research program Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki

3. Goals of the ResearchWiki • Opportunity for an initial subset -- 1200 researchers distributed over 8 worldwide laboratories -- to collaborate around research projects • Goal is to encourage early disclosure of planned research • So that it may be evolved collaboratively based on identified synergies with worldwide colleagues • Replacement of the Lotus Notes database for this subset • Continued use of the ResearchWiki through the year and into subsequent years to provide continuity • Availability to all of Research, but initial emphasis on the “Software Strategy” area Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki

4. Why a Wiki? • Enabling open access, contribution, and discussion of the research agenda throughout its lifecycle • Providing a single “starting point” to find out what is happening in research • It’s Web 2.0 – what else need we say? Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki

5. Wiki design issues • Two complementary streams need to be brought into harmony to create a plan • Strategy documents • Project descriptions • Formally-defined taxonomy for project/proposal categorization must be surfaced • All pages are editable by anyone – caused some concern going in • Modified the wiki engine to create “Discussion” areas on each page • @SIG@ construct to “sign/date” entries – not frequently used! • Page edit history shows userid of each editor Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki

6. Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki

7. Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki

8. Why is trust an issue? • “Culture change” from the past model • More openness – with respect to audience and nature of content Distributed organization • Lack of face-to-face opportunities • Cultural differences • Research organization is a meritocracy and therefore competition is built into the system • Overlay of funding business process adds another layer of competition Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki

9. Design decisions to promote development of trust • Decision to open it to Researchers only, not to the rest of the enterprise • Leverage shared identity • But currently an issue, as strategists want to give access to their non-Research partners • Linked discussion area to each project description • Separate spaces for one topic – how will people sort their contributions between the spaces? • No anonymous access • Although unless people sign contribution, requires effort to figure out who said what • Named contacts for wiki issues • not just “ResearchWikiFeedback@us.ibm.com” or a “Feedback” link • Open Trac/Subversion for issues and code Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki

10. Experiences during early usage • First test of openness: Feedback being given to project descriptions by strategists • Even we were reticent to disclose until we had a polished description • Strategists have received complaints through email about what were perceived as overly critical comments • Developing norms about editing content created by others • Out of band negotiations precedes changes: asking for permission and alerting colleague of changes • Can I trust that the work model has really changed? • Do all stakeholders understand the new content in the same way? • Degree of content attribution on the content page varies • Some are signed with full name/userid • Some only with first name – in vs. out group • Some choose to be anonymous though of course can be traced Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki

11. Some early usage statistics • Total unique users: 832 • 236 individuals created pages but 346 individuals edited them • About half the authors edited pages they did not initiate • 632 pages have been created • 63 of these have active discussions Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki

12. An early success story From: S@IBM India Research Lab, New Delhi, India To: M@IBM Watson Research Lab, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA Hi, I saw your proposal on <topic>; it is very interesting. Is it possible to get your tool <version> 0.1? From: M@IBM Watson Research Lab To: ResearchWiki Team aha, the research wiki is working... i don't think i ever got a note like this in 3 years with <previous system>. Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki

13. Some future work to improve user experience • Hosted discussions by senior management and/or strategists • Demonstrate to researchers that management is involved • A “training wheels” approach – create opportunities for discussion, possibly among competitors, under “watched” circumstances • Visualizations of activity on project description pages • Communicate “aliveness” of a page • Enable page owners to see who is interested in their work Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki