Case study about building a collaboration wiki inside the IT community at The Washington Post. First presented to students at USDA Graduate School in June 2008.

1. Community building inside the enterprise
Moving toward wiki adoption at The Washington Post
By Dave Burke. Presented at USDA Graduate School in June, 2008.
1

2. IT Workspace
• Our case study
• What’s a wiki
• Two key concepts: linking
and tagging
• Lessons learned so far

3. Washington Post IT Unit
• About 200 people
• Supports operations of the newspaper and some operations at other
Washington Post Company affiliates.
• Publishing systems
• Advertising systems
• Syndication
• Accounting
• Production
• Infrastructure

4. My Team: Web Solutions
• 14 people
• Design, build, and manage web
applications to support The
Washington Post
• These include. . .

8. Background - Web Solutions
• Back to 2005, we’ve been working on how to better support our
apps
• Much of the problem stemmed from important knowledge being
trapped
• Various private and shared drives
• Old email threads
• But mostly, people’s brains

9. KLMNO
Risk of wetware-based knowledge storage
For instance, on most Saturdays. . .
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aok/2190318934 http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikelo/614958266/
Technical Architect His boss
dave burke

10. Background - Web Solutions
• 2006-2007: The stakes for application support were getting higher
• SOA was making troubleshooting more complex
• A large SAP integration was making it more business critical
• We needed a better process, and a better tool
• We tried a wiki

11. Background - Web Solutions
• Results from our 60-day pilot
• Wiki works as a platform
• But the product we chose didn’t cut it
• Special markup language
• Users were anonymous
• Attachments/Images were difficult to handle
• We kept using it

12. Document Repository Study project
• WYSIWYG Editor - no markup
language
• Named users and single signon
• Full-text search, including
attachments
• Email, RSS integration
• Tagging for dynamic
organization and blogs

13. What is a wiki?
13

14. What is a wiki?
A collection of web pages
Every page is editable
Just click, type, and save.
Every page has a name
Link by page name; no HTML
required.
Source: Ross Mayfield. http://www.slideshare.net/ross/new-paradigms-for-using-computers

15. What is a wiki?
Communication Not a
“Platform” “Channel”
(e.g., e-mail, IM)
READER
EDITOR
EDITOR
READER AUTHOR READER
AUTHOR
AUTHOR
READER
• Visible to all • Visible only to participants
• Persistent • Transient

16. What is a wiki?
• Wikis build group memory (or at
least a better chance at it)
• Simplifies collaboration (everyone
works on the same document)
• Accuracy through (identified) peer
review
• Every page revision is saved
Source: Ross Mayfield. http://www.slideshare.net/ross/new-paradigms-for-using-computers
• Roll-back changes with a click

17. What is a wiki?

18. What is a wiki?

19. What is a wiki?

20. What is a wiki?

22. IT Workspace Wiki
19

23. IT Workspace Wiki
It’s like our own Wikipedia.
19

25. KLMNO
Linking vs. Tagging

26. KLMNO
Linking vs. Tagging
Linking connects
individual pages
•“Hand Made”
• Static

27. KLMNO
Linking vs. Tagging
Linking connects
individual pages
•“Hand Made”
• Static
Tagging creates
groups of related
pages
•“Machine Made”
• Dynamic

28. KLMNO
What are tags?
• Keywords related to an
object (e.g., photo, wiki
page)
• Tags categorize objects
on the fly
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/260004685/in/set-72157594311446988/
http://workspace.washpost.com
dave burke

29. KLMNO
Tagging example: photos on Flickr.com
View this video slide: http://bit.ly/St5A1
http://workspace.washpost.com
dave burke

30. KLMNO
Relating photos with tags
http://workspace.washpost.com
dave burke

31. KLMNO
Relating photos with tags
“Christmas”
“Evan”
http://workspace.washpost.com
dave burke

32. KLMNO
Tagging works similarly on the wiki
View this video slide: http://bit.ly/puuZn

33. KLMNO
Linking vs. Tagging
“IT’s
News”
Linking connects
individual pages
•“Hand Made”
• Static
Tagging creates
groups of related
pages
“System” •“Machine Made”
“WebLogic” • Dynamic
Tags are keywords

34. Lessons learned so far

35. Lessons learned so far
• 90% of wiki success is half mental
• Mindset shift - Sharing by default
• Current: "I only know of three people who need this information, so I'll email it
to them."
• New and Better: "I only know of three people who need this information, so I'll
publish it on the workspace for them, and any others I don't know about."
• Best: “The workspace is my default tool for collaboration and communication,
because it's easy, and it gives me maximum value for my time. I only use
email when I really need privacy.”

36. Lessons learned so far
• 90% of wiki success is half mental
• Publishing Anxiety
• A belief that the workspace is more official makes people
think their work needs to be polished and 100% accurate,
which leads to them doing nothing.
• Current: "I'm happy to answer questions in the hallway and by
email, but writing something 'official' is a bigger deal."
• New and Better: “I understand that the IT Workspace is a living
document. I can contribute information I’m only ‘pretty sure’ about,
and note it as such, just like I would in email.”

37. Lessons learned so far
• 90% of wiki success is half mental
• Organize-as-you-go model takes getting used to
Traditional New
1. Write 1. Write
2. Edit 2. Publish
3. Publish 3. Edit
(repeat)

38. Lessons learned so far
#1 Question about the wiki so far:
“Put this info on the wiki? Okay. . . where?”

39. Information Architecture Challenges
• Tag ambiguity

40. Information Architecture Challenges
• Overcome some tag ambiguity by declaring a tag for a particular topic

41. Lack of structure scares some people

42. Lack of structure scares some people
• It helps to provide an overall structure to start

43. Emergence doesn’t scale down to enterprise levels
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html

44. Emergence doesn’t scale down to enterprise levels
Wikipedia IT Workspace
1.67 Billion 150
1.5 Billion 135
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html
167 Million 15

45. Emergence doesn’t scale down to enterprise levels
Wikipedia IT Workspace
1.67 Billion 150
1.5 Billion 135
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html
167 Million 15
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-sends-167-billion-users-to-wikipedia-
per-month/5084/

46. Key roles in wiki success
Managers
Gardeners

47. Why use the wiki?
• Support self-service
• Fewer late-night (or mid-day) support calls
• Easier access to the information you need to support your systems
• Less occupational spam
• Wiki pages and blogs allow you freedom to choose what info you receive
• Keep your skillset current

48. That’s it.
Questions?
Dave Burke
dave@daveburke.com
http://slideshare.net/daveburke
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