Implementing Wiki in Engineering Firm 1

[bridgeart]

Does anyone have experience with practical implementation of wiki software ("open knowledgebase that anybody can edit", see example at

http://www.bridgeart.net/sample_wiki)

in an engineering firm? Enterprise wikis seems to have a great potential for keeping information easily organized, but there seems to be large resistance to their implementation.

 

[IRstuff]

It's one thing to contribute to Wikipedia because you've got some sort of civic satisfaction.

But, in a work environment, it becomes a burden, as well as potential threat to job security.

TTFN

 

[KENAT]

One has been set up at my company.

A couple of other CAD users and I have made numerous posts to it with CAD tips, tricks and info.

I doubt if more than 2 or 3 other people have looked at the information we've posted.

Given the limited response I'm seriously reconsidering whether to post stuff at all.

 

[MadMango]

We have an intranet built with some sort of CMS (content management system), I forget which one. Managers have administration access to post/approve articles and edit content. Each department has their own section. Anyone in the company with a computer can write content and submit it for approval and inclusion.

I've been the only one to add any content in the last 10 months. The good thing is that when someone has a general question about the company or the engineering department I can point them to the intranet for the answer.

[green]"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."[/green]

Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[ecwcee]

I love Wikis but I don't think that they are the most practical application in an engineering firm. I'm an engineer and an experienced web programmer, and have been working on a lot of internal project management tools for my company, similar to what you're discussing here. We also have a web programmer in our IS department, and between the two of us we've come up with a system that functions similar to this forum-based website.

Our "Engineer Knowledge Base" catches emails that go around the company's focus groups, as well as discussions from our CAD troubleticket system. They're all stored in a database and accessed by anyone on our intranet through a searchable web app. So when someone has a question or a problem, rather than trying to get a live person they can type it in and see if it's already been discussed within the company. The articles in the web interface can then also have comments added to them to further the discussion.

We've found this to be a simpler and more effective solution than a full blown wiki, since we design our systems for people with computer skill levels ranging from "barely able to check email" through very advanced users.

Hope this helps, always happy to answer questions.

Eric

 

[IRstuff]

The problem, often, is that email traffic has an undocumented context, so simply glomming onto an email with a mention of an apparently "similar" problem is no guarantee that the problem actually is similar.

A Wiki would have the advantage of being more formalized and therefore, more likely to encompass the context of the problem, the assumptions, the groundrules, etc. I would see a KB with relevant emails as an adjunct to a Wiki, rather than an alternate.

TTFN

 

[ecwcee]

Very good point, this isn't just something that reads emails and makes random decisions though. It only saves messages from the focus groups, which are where the specilized questions are asked and answered at our company. An example would be that any email sent to the "Storm Water" internal mailing list is saved in the database. Any messages coming to the list with a "Re:" in the subject are associated with the parent message to construct a thread. Obviously message-by-message moderation is possible and helpful.

We created the KB as a place where any user could get there with one click, type in a word, and see all discussions related to it. That way they didn't have to do a lot of topic browsing or digging around. I agree that a Wiki is much nicer and can be more effective, and the KB itself is a nice complement on the discussion side of it, but for the sake of this conversation I wanted to present a workable alternative that we'd used in place of a full-blown Wiki, since there are probably other companies out there whose users might not get as much as they could or should out of an internal Wiki, as KENAT stated. Being able to suck in messages from the focus groups allows the KB to build itself through the natural course of the company's technical conversations, rather than relying on additional time and effort from the users.

Eric

 

[KENAT]

I should probably say that as well as the wicki sending out messages to any one who's registered to that section for any new posts, for some of the more signicant posts we add names to the list of who gets notified or send a message to the CAD user group.

However, interest still seems kind of low.

This thread has given me an idea though.....

 

[bridgeart]

AECbytes recently published my article on wikis for AEC - it is available at

http://aecbytes.com/viewpoint/2007/issue_31.html.

The discussion below the article and an article review at

http://www.extranetevolution.com/extranet_evolution/2007/03/wikis_and_aec_c.html

provided some interesting insight in addition to the discussion in the thread above.

-ok

http://www.bridgeart.net

 

[csd72]

In a small firm, the upper management should know who has experience at what and direct people appropriately.

I a large firm it may work.

In a medium firm.....?

 

[IRstuff]

Does anyone REALLY know someone else?

Unless a particular subject comes up in conversation, it's highly unlikely that electro-optics-oriented manager would know or care that I spent more than 10 years working on semiconductor electronics, unrelated to the electro-optics stuff I do now.

Likewise, we worked with someone for more than 5 years before finding out that he was a RF designer in a previous life.

TTFN

FAQ731-376