Wiki Consulting - Our Approach

Introducing a wiki at the workplace needs a methodical approach to be successful. We're happy to accompany and advise you during the whole process.

We usually start with a first workshop meeting. If wanted we'll give you a short presentation on the typical use cases and advantages of wikis. Then we'll jump into collectively analyzing which problems exist in your company and which of them could be solved by a wiki. Because: even though wikis are very flexible in their uses, a wiki is not always the best solution. Our longstanding experience in the IT business enables us to see further than our own nose.

Use cases where wikis typically improve the workflow include among other things:

• Replacing the traditional “Intranet”
• Knowledge Management
• Quality Management
• Project Documentation
• Everything that needs collaborative work on texts

When problems are identified, parameters and objectives need to be identified. This includes for example:

• Technical Requirements
  • Where will the wiki be installed?
  • How should it be integrated into the existing IT?
  • Are access requirements met (eg. PC Workstations, Browsers)?
• Organizational Requirements
  • Who should have access?
  • What's the time frame for the wiki introduction?
• Success Criteria
  • Pages?
  • Readers/Writers figures?

Especially organizing access control rules is a topic that usually needs quite some internal discussions. This is mostly about the balance between information security and openness and trust towards your employees. Of we will assist you in finding the happy medium for the success of your wiki.

All wikis are not created equal. There are more than 100 different implementations for a reason. Using the results from the analysis we will, in conjunction with you, create a technical requirement specification and help to prioritize on the features.

Through our work on WikiMatrix we have a very good overview about the capabilities of the different engines. We will make suggestions based on this knowledge and your requirements. The final decision on the used technology is at your hand of course.

Not all wishes can be covered by a out of the box solution. In most enterprises a connection between the wiki and existing the IT infrastructure is needed. Fitting the wiki into the corporate design helps your employees to identify with the new tool.

With more than 10 years of experience in application development, CosmoCode is the right partner to do the wiki customizing for you.

Wikis create benefit mainly through a broad usage by all employees. But nobody likes to start at an empty sheet. Hence creating initial contents and structures for your new wiki is most import. Usually content from existing documents can be recycled here.

In one or more workshops we'll have a look at existing documents with a small team of your employees. We will have a look at the existing structures and will guide you on how to transfer the existing knowledge into the wiki. Where useful we will also provide technical help,for example by writing conversion scripts.

It is sensible to make the wiki available to a smaller part of the company first. We help you with the introduction and offer training for your employees if needed.

When the wiki is introduced successfully in one part of your company, it's time to do a company wide rollout. The users from the pilot phase will then play the role of knowledge carriers inside your enterprise. CosmoCode continues to be available for help during this time of course.

Once the rollout is done and the wiki is in use for some time, it should be check if the initial objectives where met. If not, there might be adjustments or improvements needed. These might be technical or could consist of help with restructuring data or additional training.