This is from Jordan Frank, Vice President Sales & Business Development at Traction Software. I’m in Providence, RI to deliver the closing keynote this afternoon at Traction User Group 2009.
Awhile back, Stewart Mader was involved in a discussion about the role of professional services in emergent systems like wikis. In the many pilots I’ve seen its become increasingly clear that adoption doesn’t just happen on its own, there are a variety of factors ranging from technology to timing to training and even taxonomy (or folksonomy, if you will) which all play a role.
The role of professional services, in my words, is to bring forward best practices and to accelerate the process of identifying the emergent patterns that may be specific to any one organization.
In Structuring for Emergence, I’ve discussed how those patterns are a part of organizational grain and are best exposed when in context of a facilitating structure. The facilitating structure is defined by the technology deployed, the organization of the content in that technology (including space names, permissions, tags, and the way information is visually displayed) as well as the behavioral, organizational orientation to the technology (including whether there is training, whether contribution is compulsive or voluntary, and how communication in such a system aligns, or doesn’t, with job role and position).
These two cases explain how services facilitate better outcomes, faster:
Fixture Manufacturing Company: A customer installed TeamPage and started establishing workspaces with no problem. His first few steps were to make a workspace for each competitor. In just a few moments of discussion, we agreed he would be better off with a Market Research workspace containing a tag for each competitor. He engineered his workspaces accordingly and is thriving as he joins the 12-Month club in November 2009.
Pharmaceutical Marketing Division: Pharmaceutical firms are required to err on the side of caution when sharing information, but have high value for information sharing and relish the opportunity reduce barriers as much as possible. A customer needed two layers of review and started off with a process that involved information content approval by a product specific marketing manager and review of tag usage by a content administrator. I showed them how timing effects could delay the publishing process by days if not a week or more in such a two tier process.
Instead, we decided on a parallel process where the product marketing manager approved content for publishing while in a separate and independent process, a content administrator was sure to review the use of tags on the content. The latter step is important for wiki gardening, but not a necessary barrier between contribution of draft content and approval for publishing to the enterprise.
Despite anyone’s judgement as to what % of collaboration success is attributed to Technology vs. People, getting the technology right and configuring it in a way that meets rather than defeats a need is a Door 1 pre-requisite.
Strictly linked with transparency concept, openness is at the base of the principle that people work better if they have access to the right information and possibility to assume that all over the organization.
The simple access to other group member data or the possibility to know activities scheduled also in other groups are normal operations in a mature context such as is allowed to look to other team solutions or results in order to decide something for the own team.
A common element between Wiki philosophy and innovation successful case histories, is the partial or total absence of structure or, saying better, of hierarchy. The possibility, in fact, to contribute in the same way, indifferently at which level you are involved in the organization, is one of the first steps towards the reduction of barriers to collaboration, participation and involvement in the organizational life.
Peering is to intend in the two ways of organizational commitment: from both the perspective, the access to common information and the possibility to contribute to corporate knowledge.
We don’t know whether the president has ever personally used a wiki, but his staff at the White House Office of Management and Budget uses one.
Washington Post columnist Stephen Barr explores how the OMB is using a wiki to track earmarks in the federal budget. Earmarking is a process by which members of Congress designate money for specific projects, often in their home states or congressional districts.
With the wiki, federal agencies compiled a database of 13,496 earmarks in 10 weeks. In the old days, it would have taken six months to get the information to the OMB.
That’s a great example of the improvement in efficiency that a wiki can bring.
The budget wiki is not as freewheeling as Wikipedia, the sometimes-controversial online encyclopedia. It is the government, after all. For security, federal officials have to ask permission to join; it is not open to the public or Congress.
And a good example of how a wiki fits into the existing landscape of an organization. Security and Permissions are there, and it’s not an open playground for the public. What’s more, it gives people inside OMB a way to work more closely and make better informed decisions that take multiple viewpoints into account:
Karen Evans, who oversees government-wide technology policy at the OMB, views wikis as a way to provide an opportunity “where everybody gets a say” that then leads to “a very informed decision” by officials.
The wiki permits budget officials to work in real time with one another, rather than sort through e-mail chains wending through the government. It allows officials to hold online meetings when time is short or bad weather makes in-person meetings difficult to schedule. It is open around the clock, so federal budget officials may post comments from home at night or on weekends.
This is good for greater communication, handling issues that come up at odd hours faster, and enabling government to work more efficiently.
Then there’s the networking factor. The wiki features a directory of users, with their telephone numbers and e-mail addresses, an important feature in a government where people transfer among agencies or take different jobs every few years.
There are rumors flying around of YAWS (Yet Another Wikipedia Scandal). How should it affect peoples’ perception of wiki use in organizations?
Here’s a good perspective on it from a person who commented on a San Francisco Chronicle article this morning:
There is one important fact that should be kept in focus, however. Wikipedia is not some hierarchical top down business where one misbehaving leader can wreck havoc (such as can occur with our government). Rather, it represents a highly democratic and very loosely connected organization that has been mostly built on the dedicated efforts of a few thousand core volunteers. Therefore, regardless of the [alleged] misadventures of Mr. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia will continue to grow and serve.
(If you want all the details of the alleged allegations, the Chronicle article has them. I’m not going to reprint them here in the interest of focusing on the impact of Wikipedia on organizational wiki use.)
This is the kind of news item that prompts people to think all wikis – including those that organizations might use – pose the same risks for inappropriate behavior that happens on Wikipedia. [Read more]
A WikiCharter is a set of guidelines to ensure productive interaction between members of your wiki community. Here are five guidelines from the Sony Ericsson Developer World wiki:
Tim Karr, Director of SavetheInternet.com wrote to me about a new bill introduced in Congress this week that would guarantee Net Neutrality by restoring it in the foundation of communications law. Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Chip Pickering (R-Miss.) introduced the Internet Freedom Preservation Act (HR 5353) to stop relentless corporate attempts to set up roadblocks on the information superhighway.
The new bill requires the FCC to actively protect the free-flowing Internet from gatekeepers, enforcing protections that “guard against unreasonable discriminatory favoritism for, or degradation of, content by network operators based upon its source, ownership, or destination on the Internet.”
It’s an issue I feel strongly about, and you should too. The success of the Internet is a direct result of its openness and lack of hierarchy and preferential treatment for any group of users. It needs to stay that way to continue reshaping how we interact. Click here for a quick form to contact your representatives in Congress and ask them to support HR5353.
Kirk Zurell wrote today to tell me about Suffr, a module that allows, in effect, collaborative system administration using a wiki. Here’s how he describes it:
Users can compose recipes of changes to system configuration, and then sign off on them; when enough users approve, the wiki (through this module) implements the changes. Wiki users could democratically accomplish potentially any sysadmin tasks, including administering their own web server or applications, mail/news server, VOIP PBX, or peripherals. They can (and may have to!) even restart or shutdown the machine by majority vote. [Read more]
Dave Atkins of Westwood, Masachusetts wrote last week to tell me about a post he’s written on Using a Wiki to Improve Town Governance. Many people aren’t involved in their local governments because there are too many barriers to participation. Dave’s description of the barriers gets right to the heart of it: [Read more]
She opens with that line above above, from George Bernard Shaw. It’s powerful, and it was said all the way back in 19111. Now that’s not saying that professions are inherently bad, or that they shouldn’t exist. It’s really suggesting that lay people have just as much to offer as experts. [Read more]
WIKIPATTERNS
A Practical Guide to Improving Productivity and Collaboration in Your Organization
Users can compose recipes of changes to system configuration, and then sign off on them; when enough users approve, the wiki (through this module) implements the changes. Wiki users could democratically accomplish potentially any sysadmin tasks, including administering their own web server or applications, mail/news server, VOIP PBX, or peripherals. They can (and may have to!) even restart or shutdown the machine by majority vote. 
Dave Atkins of Westwood, Masachusetts wrote last week to tell me about a post he’s written on 
Beth Simone Noveck, Director of the 
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