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.

In the article, he discusses how CustomWare uses a wiki internally to improve information flow between teams working on client projects:

The Pain Point

The biggest snag we experienced was transferring knowledge and context from the sales team to the delivery team. This muddled flow of information threatened our client projects.

Rob and his company decided they needed to improve communication, and decided to use a wiki as their collaboration platform.

Using the Wiki to Manage Client Projects

Rob describes how CustomWare keeps materials and information for each project in a distinct space that staff and clients can access. Using separate spaces is good for keeping information organized, and setting permissions so that each client sees only the information relevant to their project:

With our wiki in place, we decided to partition the system into the relevant “spaces,” each designed for a separate project where staff members and clients could readily contribute information. Whenever new documents or information needed to be distributed, we placed them in the secure wiki website. Instead of emailing large attachments – which could be annoying to deliver – we simply emailed clients links to the documents online.

Reducing email is another excellent change in practice that frees peoples’ time so they can better focus on projects, and better captures information in a central place where all involved can see and use it.

How has it helped?

Thanks to our wiki system, our knowledge transfer between client engagements is pretty tight and in shape. And most of the information is captured and communicated efficiently. The wiki has been a great tool for operational, day-to-day use, and it’s become far better than servers or e-mail when it comes to storing important information and documents.

The full article is an excellent read, and Rob also discusses several other ways the company is using its wiki. He ends with an important piece of advice:

Using a wiki helps, because it is a great way to provide a blank canvas with which the team can work. However, like any technology, it is a tool, not a complete solution.

He’s right – a successful wiki depends on the active participation of as many people as possible. That’s a matter of changing existing practices and habits by showing people how the wiki improves the way they work, and giving them reasons to use it.

There were three respondents who chose “Other”, and here are their specific responses: Managing classroom information, garbage trash, and audits. Now, I can’t really say much about garbage trash, but I can comment on the other two “other” uses:

Managing classroom information is an excellent wiki use. In fact, I got started using wikis doing something very similar – building a wiki-based science curriculum.

Using a wiki for audits is a great use too – besides having all your information easily accessible in one place, the revision history the wiki maintains for every page is very audit-friendly since it shows a complete trail of who contributed information, when they did so, and what was added, changed and removed.

Jeffrey Keefer (Twitter) commented on the post and asked about a poll for education uses. That’s coming next week! He also asked for more information on some of the uses I included in the poll, like project management. Watch for that next week too.

In order to shift from the culture of individual work to the culture of collaborative work, it is obvious that the issue of trust is crucial: trust is linked not only with the Wiki spirit but it is a very important requirement of creativity and so of the orientation to innovation.

To be considered a credible expert is important such as to be sure to have reliable expert’s opinions; the feeling that you are appreciate inside your team and more in general in your community is an incentive to be active and “creative”.

Related WIOWA Questions:

8.a Time allocation (support to effectiveness)

In your online profile, do you have the possibility to write about your further expertises or personal projects?

8.b Teaming (organizational services)

When there are meetings, have you the same documentation of other participants?

8.c Openness to Ideas (knowledge and collaborative support)

Do you think that your ideas and, in general, your work, get the right acknowledgment from your Organization?

8.d Decision Making Agility (communication and socialization)

Do you consider reliable the insights coming from the whole community?

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.

Related WIOWA Questions:

7.a Collaboration (support to effectiveness)

Is it possible to access other groups’ contact data?

7.b Openness to ideas (organizational services)

Is it possible to know when other groups meet and, if you want, participate?

7.c Decision Making (knowledge and collaborative support)

In order to take decisions, do you usually look to other groups’ or departments’ work results and choices?

7.d Communication (communication and socialization)

Have you ever participated in other groups’ or departments’ discussions?

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.

Related WIOWA Questions:

6.a Supporting people (support to effectiveness)

Is everybody able to update useful information like telephone numbers or scheduled meetings?

6.b Resource Allocation (organizational services)

Is everybody able to book meeting room or, in general, common resources?

6.c Flexibility on process design (knowledge/collaborative support)

Is everybody able to recombine documents and then publish it?

6.d Communication (communication and socialization)

Is everybody free to publish (in the intranet or wiki) information useful for your colleagues?

1. Collaborative intelligence – “for example, in marketing and sales operations, you need to communicate to the field organization about an ever changing product line.” The pattern I’d use here is Magnet to establish a wiki as the “go-to” place for people out in the field.
2. Participatory knowledge base – “99 percent of the pages created [on the wiki] and tagged allow the call center to go from 20 clicks to find information to four, substantially decreasing search costs and decreasing the average call time by 10 to 20 percent.” I’d use the FAQ and Seed it with content patterns here.
3. Flexible client collaboration – “a collaborative workspace between [a firm] and the client.” Agenda is a good pattern for using the wiki to organize meetings with clients, and kickstart client collaboration.
4. Business social networks – “with your business partners or customers, where you’re communicating to them, getting feedback from them, and they’re interacting directly.” I’d use the Corporate Directory and MySpace patterns as the building blocks of a social network.

The social networking aspect is the starting point of a company sensible to Enterprise 2.0 – then Wiki – solutions. Introducing this concept in a workplace context is possible to change in a radical and effective way the previous organizational culture.

The first step to stimulate social networking is to allow the creation of personal spaces – if possible with an internal blog – and then to produce a staff list in order to let people know who their colleagues are and which are personal skills that they own. In this way there will be a simpler identification of experts.

Related WIOWA Questions:

5.a Flexibility on process design (support to effectiveness)

Is it easy to identify an expert in the whole community?

5.b Teaming (organizational services)

Are members of teams able to know all the competences and expertises of co-workers?

5.c Decision Making (knowledge and collaborative support)

When the group has to take a decision, it is usual to ask opinion to experts inside the whole community?

5.d Openness to Ideas (communication and socialization)

Are individuals insights visible to the whole community?

WikiFest – 6:00 talks

WikiFest is a new addition this year. It’s devoted to helping you start and grow a successful wiki, and I’ve structured it Pecha Kucha style which means max 6 minutes and 20 slides – get to the point, do it fast, and hear from as many people as possible!

Important Dates

May 3rd: submissions deadline for research papers, practitioner reports, workshops, panels, and tutorials

May 17th: notifications for workshop submissions

June 11th: submissions deadline for posters, demos, and DoctoralSpace proposals

June 25th: notifications for research papers, practitioner reports, panels, tutorials, posters, demos, and DoctoralSpace proposals

July 19th: final revised PDFs due

Sept 8th-10th: WikiSym 2008