How wikis help us wrangle team processes
(Toni Saddler-French has been swimming in the waters of content creation for years and years, starting with Microsoft Word 1.1. She has worked with various Microsoft Office products, Internet Explorer, and server products and technologies. In this column, she gives a birds-eye view of how your team can better organize its documents and processes with SharePoint products and technologies.)
SharePoint wikis help us wrangle some processes in our group, especially when they’re on the wilder side.
They work best when we need to capture knowledge from several people in an informal way. The authors are usually also the readers, so it feels less like one person “owns” the content.
As people add content, they can create “wiki links” as placeholders for future pages that other people will create and edit. This video interview with Ward Cunningham provides some insight.
To learn more about creating SharePoint wikis, watch this demo or read some wiki articles. In the rest of this post, we’ll tell you about some ways that we’re using wikis, and we’d love to hear from you.
Cross-functional teams – As we work more with new processes and media types, it’s important to share what we learn across teams. We use wikis to capture information, such as using multimedia, as our expertise and processes evolve.
Since we’re mixing it up more often with people who don’t share the same manager, it’s hard enough to find a common meeting time. Once we finally sync up, whether in person or virtually, people don’t want to chew up precious meeting time to plan the headings and styles of a traditional document.
Works in Progress (Tools, Processes, etc.)
When tools and processes are in their fledgling stages, information can change faster than a toddler’s mind. People need to know what’s working, what’s not, and how to work around issues.
People can add new information as it evolves, and we don’t have to round people up to revise a document. We follow up on issues by submitting them in a formal tracking database, but a wiki helps get the initial word out to the masses quickly, so people spend less time spinning wheels.
Onboarding of processes and people
A wiki is a great way to help people ramp up quickly or learn more about your team. Depending on your group’s style, you can include all serious information (Where do I find all the guidelines), or mix in some friendly tips (Where’s the vending machine and is it OK to eat the fish in the cafeteria?). Each author adds his or her own perspective – everyone is new once, right -- so the information is richer than if just one person wrote it.
On my team, we created a wiki to help people from other teams learn more about SharePoint technologies. If we find ourselves frequently e-mailing certain types of information, then it goes into the wiki. We also don’t have to worry about certain pockets of expertise living only in people’s heads, in case someone takes a Hawaiian vacation and decides they’d rather surf (and not on the Internet) for a living.
Wikis are one of many tools in the arsenal
We don’t use wikis for everything. We use lists with columns galore and workflows for planning our content. This enables us to slice and dice data for various stakeholders. We use a blog for sharing ideas, and specialized lists like surveys and calendars. When we need to collect ideas in a rapid way, however, wikis are a great tool.
We sometimes give wikis a head start with a starter TOC, a lightweight template, or a little info. This helps people feel more comfortable about contributing, especially those who don’t like to show up first at a party, sit in the front row, or write on a blank page.
We try not to go too far, though, so that it doesn’t feel like one person dominates. Like any body of information, wikis sometimes need a little TLC and some light weeding. Since it’s a community space, though, we don’t buzz through it with an editorial weed whacker.
Will wikis work for your group? Your mileage may vary, depending on your group’s working style and how you plan to use the information. This blog post links to articles from Kathleen Lau and Lee Reed, who provide insight about the people aspects of working with newer types of media, like wikis and blogs.
If you’d like a second opinion, you might like reading perspectives from Woody Windischman, blogger and Professional Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 author. He also shares some tips and tricks on using the preview pane view in a wiki-like style in other SharePoint lists.
If you’ve got any tips or tricks to share, or unique ways of using wikis, please comment away. Or maybe we should set up a wikis wiki.
