Wiki at Work

Earlier I blogged we were trying a Wiki for a group Knowledge Base. It's been a huge success. The big thing I found is that Wiki is also perfect for team documentation. The ability to link to files or upload files means existing documentation is easy to keep and more importantly, it's easily centralized.

The keys were to figure it out first, then tell everyone about it, then YOU use it, then patiently advocate it to all you teammates. Well I should back up, I first made the case to my manager about needing something for our unique fixes and documentation. Install and setup was relatively easy, just keep at it. Then it was eat your own dogfood time. I put up some documentation and a few VMware fixes I always reference. Create a new page template. Tell your team about it, and reference it. When fixes I put up were useful in fixing problems, I would include the link to it when I emailed out the service was fixed. Not only does this get them using the Wiki, it also gives your on-call support staff the confidence to troubleshoot and fix your systems without paging you late night or on the weekends.

I've been lucky. I work with a great team that are not afraid to try new things. So far they love it, and see how it can be very useful. The success of my Wiki has inspired others to give it a shot. I've had 3 other teams ask me how I got mine going, and I've been asked to create a website we can use to keep everyone up to date in case email is down. So now I'm becoming the team "web guy" which isn't a bad thing. Now I have to dig into Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Fun stuff!