Tag Archives: collaboration

The Wikipedia Manual of Style: A Study in Governance

Governance is a fantastic idea. In fact, it is absolutely critical to the continued success of an application. There are times that governance, to me, seems to be a great idea on paper, but in practice it’s very difficult to implement. I was talking to someone the other day on the topic of governance, and I used the example of Wikipedia as a successful governance plan and execution. I thought it would be worthwhile to dig deeper into the topic as a great example to look to.

Of all places Wikipedia has a great outline of governance goals as applied to the IT arena.

The primary goals for information technology governance are to (1) assure that the investments in IT generate business value, and (2) mitigate the risks that are associated with IT. This can be done by implementing an organizational structure with well-defined roles for the responsibility of information, business processes, applications, infrastructure, etc.

The more and more I do true implementations of IT whether it be SharePoint, WordPress, or any similar technology is the role of governance. Items from controlled vocabularies to usage policies are essential the sustainability of an IT initiative especially in terms of ensuring that IT investments generate true business value. A lack of governance is always a primary reason why IT projects fail.

The Wikipedia Manual of Style

Wikipedia has an extensive governance model outlined in their Manual of Style. Everything from abbreviations, punctuation, etc is included in this one of many operating documents for Wikipedia.  It is clear not only reading this document that it has been carefully thought out, but the power of their guidelines comes from adherence to the document.

In a policy and guidelines document it is noted on who is responsible for enforcing these policies.

You are a Wikipedia editor. Since Wikipedia has no editor-in-chief or top-down article approval mechanism, active participants make copyedits and corrections to the format and content problems they see. So the participants are both writers and editors.

Books such as Wikinomics probe how such a mass scale collaborative project doesn’t turn itself upside down, and it’s truly a site to behold.  It becomes apparent that Wikipedia editors tend to enjoy adhering to the governance model, because they understand it is crucial to the long-term sustainability of the project. The editor therefore become stakeholders in there edits, and they understand that if they want their work to not be lost is an adherence to the governance documents.

That is of course not the whole story behind Wikipedia. The Wikimedia foundation does have a small army of administrator that constanty patrol the recent changes list, and ensure that the governance model is actually being utilized.  So actually ensuring that certain individuals are empowered to a special degree of administrative rights also becomes a crucial factor in its success.

Applying a Best Practice in Your Organization

Let’s face it, none of will ever be doing something as wide-scale as Wikipedia (although never say never), and so the question becomes how can we apply the best practice from Wikipedia governance to our individual IT endeavors? Thinking through this I came to this short list.

  1. Governance guides need to be thoroughly thought through and documented.
  2. Those who contribute information need to be made aware of the governance guidelines.
  3. A governance document should not be seen as a barrier to creativity and collaboration.
  4. Certain individuals should be wholly devoted to the task of enforcing governance.
  5. Those who consume information should have confidence that governance is being enforced to maintain findability, accuracy, etc.

I’d be interested to know how these overriding principles are being used in other successful governance implementations. I’d venture to bet that successful initiatives mimic much of the list above.  Whether SharePoint or Wikipedia the same governance principles apply and are necessary.

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The Four C’s to Sell MOSS

You’ve been tasked with bringing some order to the chaos of your various organizations’ file shares, e-mail servers, and externally facing websites. After all the research and analysis you’ve done you’ve decided that MOSS 2007 is the optimal solution to solve the problem. The problem? Selling it to management. You can demo MOSS with all its fantastic features and Office integration, but your management needs some “bullet point” reasons why they should invest in MOSS.

In Essential SharePoint 2007* the authors lay out the “four C’s” of company portals that MOSS can satisfy. These can be used as a good starting point to sell them and bring MOSS into your organization.

Communication is a fantastic reason to bring MOSS into your organization’s processes. Many companies are plagued with disseminating important information both to internal and external individuals, and MOSS can aid in delivering timely, relevant, and accurate information to your target audience. Through the use of MOSS sites geared for news, announcement web parts, blogs, and audience targeting—MOSS can greatly help your organization accomplish this much-needed functionality.

Collaboration is the strong point of MOSS and also the easiest to sell. Your organization struggles from discerning which document is the most recent, and people in your organization realize that e-mailing around a document is not an effective way to collaborate. Here is a great time to talk about the workflow capabilities in MOSS. Demonstrate an approval workflow which engages the management instantly by showing them how the whole process can be automated, contained in one area, and management can see what’s holding up the workflow. Add onto this team sites with robust document management capability with an extensible security model, and you’re well on your way to convincing them.

Consolidation is probably the reason you were tasked to find a better solution than file shares. There is no way anymore to know where to get what and if it’s even accurate. With enterprise search you can ensure that your users can always find the document (with a good metadata structure/information architecture). You can also sell the Business Data Catalog (BDC) which can crawl those old file shares and bring them into the same search interface. You’ll also see eyebrows rise when you show them the business intelligence capabilities in MOSS such as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which will help your management make the best decision on the most up-to-date information.

Consistency is something that we all long for in our IT applications. Right now your public facing website, other marketing materials, and even standard company documentation can’t look the same for any length of time. With the use of master pages you can be sure that the interface changes you make will be reflected across your entire MOSS installation. Having problems keeping that PowerPoint template up to date? Creating a content type will ensure that your users will always have the latest version of the companies template.

These are four great selling points of MOSS to bring your management on board. When partnered with some simple demonstrations that will create a strong case for MOSS.

*Jamison, S., Cardarelli, M., & Hanley, S. (2007). Essential Sharepoint 2007. Reading: Addison-Wesley Professional.

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Blogging in the Enterprise

Ellen Simonetti received an unexpected call from her employer, Delta, telling her that her manager needed to “talk” to her. Ellen found out that her employer was firing her for posing “inappropriate” pictures on her blog. Despite her clean performance record, she was given no warning and terminated. For something she thought was harmless it spilled into her professional life and adversely effected her.

It’s stories like this that has given corporations a bad taste for the idea of blogging. It is seen as something that adds no real business value and instead detracts the employee from getting “real work” done or even worse smearing the image of the organization. After all, people on MySpace blog but no one “professional” does this. What do we then do with these new ECM solutions, including SharePoint 2007, that include blogging modules? Do we ignore them? Is it really that bad?

I have actually become quite convicted that blogging by employees can add immense value to companies in terms of knowledge management.

The Case for Blogging

What’s interesting about this is that most corporate executives/managers don’t seem to recognize that when they search on the Internet often times what they’re looking for is found on blogs. These can be answers to questions, similarly-minded individuals to collaborate with, and much more. Google has realized this and has even created a specialized search just through blog content. There is much to be learned.

Peter Kollock has published a fantastic article entitled “The Economies of Online Coöperation” where outlines the three major reasons why individuals participate in knowledge exchange. One of which, anticipated reciprocity, is a great example of how blogs do just that.

If each person shares freely, the groups as a whole is better off, having access to information and advice that no single person might match. […] If the possibility of future reciprocation is the motivation driving an individual’s contribution, then the likelihood of providing public goods will be increased to the extent individuals are likely to interact with each other in the future and to the extent that there is some way to keep track of past actions (for example, by making sure contributions are seen by the group as a whole or by providing archives of past actions and contributions).

This is exactly why people blog. There is a perceived reciprocity in providing this information. The second motivation, increased reputation, is also important. These two factors explain why people blog on issues other than their dogs. Here is a summation of reasons for allowing blogging in the enterprise.

  • Employees will want to share information if they receive credit
  • Employees will want to share information if their professional/personal reputation can be increased (leading to a subject matter expert label)
  • Employees will want to share information if there is a perceived future benefit for doing so

These are powerful motivations. Surely it is enough to consider the opportunity for dramatic knowledge transfer.

Arguments Against Blogging in the Enterprise

“My employees will publish something contrary to our principles thereby tarnishing our image.”

This is a problem not with blogs or any other medium for knowledge exchange. If users cannot exercise restraint in this regard then it is a people problem and not one with blogs or other related methods. When an employee knows they will be held accountable for content they are less likely to do something detrimental to their careers. Further, you can enable only intranet-based blogs which allow the content to be only shared internally and also indexed for users to search against that information.

“Our employee productivity will decrease.”

This is also a problem not with blogs but people. Imagine if one of your employees has a valuable “lesson learned” in a critical business process. By enabling them to write about their experience the content can be disseminated to other employees to avoid eventual productivity decrease. I believe a strong argument can be made that by disabling blogging in the enterprise that that will cause potential productivity loss.

Final Points

By enabling blogging in the enterprise on topics related to the business you have actually enabled powerful knowledge transfer and retention. It will also facilitate strong community, dialogue, and increased business productivity. Don’t make the mistake of not using tools to their potential and quenching potential areas of knowledge transfer. By properly training and enabling your employees you will find you will maximize your ROI in your ECM solution.

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