Social Technologies like Blogs and Wikis which are already popular on the consumer Internet have steadily been making inroads to the other side of the firewall as well. Everone from Large enterprise clients to small companies are already using these with varied success rate or are considering using these technologies/tools.
So if you are one of those considering implementing a wiki, it is important to understand all the aspects related to not only technology but also the impact a wiki can have in terms of organization and other “softer” issues. J. Boye, have just published a new research, Wiki in the Enterprise which will help you understand just that.
The report presents a balanced perspective on the benefits as well as challenges. For example, everyone knows that a wiki can help improve productivity when used as a centralized repository of common information and questions. However, the report goes a step furthur and suggests what actually needs to be done to ensure this. There are best practices and recommendations for implementation as well as adoption. A project check list and another list of major wiki vendors are also quite handy to kick start your initiatives.
I would have loved to see some more details on different wiki vendors and how they compare with wiki offerings of other products (Portal, CMS). But may be that is a subject of another future report?
Apoorv,
I think apart from Enterprises Wiki will be implemented/embraced more by Educational Institutions (Colleges, Universities). This would help the learning community in forming virtual forums and also enabling exchange of ideas,thoughts and even lectures. Since cost of education is increasing exponentially implementing this will not be a problem.
On the darker side……
Already enterprises are sitting on huge content silos which they are struggling to manage. If the emerging technologies like Wiki are implemented without a thought or careful planning it would become a nightmare in managing/maintaining the ever growing content.
Thanks
Karthick
Apporv,
With Wikis, KM’s,blogs, Portals, document management, content management solutions being implemented or rather experimented in the same enterprises, I see a mes around mountains and mountains of content lying around and an absolute disconnect between them. Moreover we tend to forget the pain the authors have to go through who has to enter the same content at multiple places, killing the very own idea of an enterprise content management. the ground realities are quite harsh, the different departments execute a diff techniques to manage their content which makes things even more complicated.
It’s imperative to look at the larger pricture and as you said it would be interesting to have a study/report across these various kind of tools, a good topic for now…Or maybe there is something avilable and probably I am not aware of it, could you let me know if there is anyting somewhere?