Do you have problems training new staff members?  Do you forget how to do those little tasks that only need to be done every 6 months?  Do you have complex processes that you need to write down so you can refine them?  Do you want to be able to establish that your business has valuable intellectual property?  There’s a solution … and it’s not expensive!! …

One of the most amazing, and under-discussed, ideas to come out on the internet over the last decade is the concept of “Wikis”.  Most of you would, of course, be familiar with Wikipedia, which is an example of a certain type of Wiki – albeit on a huge scale!  However, Wikis in their original idea are much more simple – the idea being that they provide an easy to use and easy to search medium for dumping ideas and thoughts down.  There are several key concepts in the Wiki paradigm that make it extremely useful:

1. Wikis are easy to add text to and require little knowledge to use.  We use MediaWiki internally and added a module to it called “FckEdit” which allows easy-to-use formatting (see example of editor window below)

   

2. Anyone can change a Wiki – As little security as possible is enforced, the idea being that the more control that’s imposed the less likely people are to contribute.
3. Documentation evolves – it doesn’t have to perfect at first try, it’s better to just get something out there so the community can assist with evolving it

Initial experiments with Wikis have proved them to be a highly successful way of documenting processes, ideas and systems – they often work where more formal approaches have been tried and failed.  Obviously Wikipedia itself is a great example of just this, but there are many stories of Wiki technology transforming businesses and government departments.

One of the key ideas of Wikis is that anyone can modify a page.  This works because it keeps a history of changes and if you want to revert to a change, it’s only a click away. This means that if someone makes an edit which introduces errors, the change can easily be reversed.

Wikis are searchable – so it makes it easy to look up concepts and work done in the past, even if it was done a few years ago.  For instance, we were talking about some custom work we had done on our PBX phone system the other day.  We looked up the Wiki entry, which took us about 30 seconds to find, and instantly we had some basic info on the work that had been done 2 years ago, which none of us had been able to remember in detail until we saw the short (10 line) article we’d written when the work was done.  One of the tips here is to make sure you include keywords that might help to find the article.

At White Dog, there have been times when it’s been hard to get the idea of how important documentation is into the team’s head.  In order to bootstrap our Wiki when we started it in 2008, the deal was that coffee would be free at our team meeting every week if you brought an article you’d created in the Wiki!  Over time, as a result of the coffee policy, we’ve collected 337 articles in our Wiki and it’s become an invaluable and fairly complete record of our work practices, process and policies.

Some example articles from our Wiki:

• a 3 line article summarizing 3 hours of research to make it easy to find next time we need it
• 5 liner on when the garbage bins goes out and how to contact the council
• an article outlining some standards for web development practices
• a summary of key plugins for Joomla
• Documentation on our servers and their configuration
• Policies on email and internet use

A wiki takes time to build up, but can be an absolutely vital tool in taking your business to the next step.

Staff training can be accelerated with a Wiki too – new staff can read the article then discuss it with existing team members, and we also ask them to update articles as they find inaccuracies or unclear writing.

One important thing to remember with a Wiki is that the articles can actually be very short – sometimes a quick tip or a link to a useful website can save many hours of research.  It’s also important to remember that you are generally writing for a knowledgeable person and there’s no need to spend ages documenting the more obvious details – at least initially, getting the broader or the rough details down can be a big start and you can come back and refine what you’ve written later.  It’s better to get something down rather than nothing!  As your Wiki evolves, it can become an online process manual which can greatly contribute to the value of your business.

Wikis are actually relatively easy and cheap to set up, and can even take the place of a normal website if it’s relevant to your business.  Most are based on free software and there are some good options – TikiWiki and MediaWiki being the strongest as far as I know, but there are many others.

Has anyone else used Wiki technology in their companies?  Please comment and share if you have.

If your interested in a wiki, shoot us an email or give us a call. We will install and configure it for $600 ( though mention this blog article and get $100 off if ordered during month of July). We also provide a PDF cheat sheet on on how to do the basics. Turnaround time is 3 business days.