Weblogs as Base for Knowledge Management Systems? 43
cpfeifer asks: "I'm joining a small startup that needs a knowledge management solution. I know that 'knowledge management' is seen an empty buzzword, but after working at a company where the communication is very poor, I see the value of allowing folks to post their own news instead of having it filtered through some sort of corporate newsletter. I've seen the commercial portals (Plumtree & others), but after seeing a couple of OSS publication systems (phpNuke, Slash), I think these would fit the bill quite nicely." Aside from some of the basic features found in weblogs (posting, archival, sorting and searching), what else is necessary for the proper maintenance and use of such a system? How hard would it be to adapt existing weblog-ware to this task?
Re:tsop tsrif (Score:2)
Reduce turnover (Score:2, Interesting)
So bottom line: Pay the engineers a lot. Don't let them leave the company.
Wiki (Score:3, Insightful)
Go for a Wiki. I can recommend MoinMoin
(sorry if there are any spelling mistakes, My goddamn fonts are broken and I can only read this back in this bizarre roman/metropolis thingy)
Re:Wiki (Score:2)
Re:Wiki (Score:1, Informative)
Wiki Absolutely! (Score:4, Insightful)
A Wiki has these benefits over a Weblog.
Most wikis support a RecentChanges page. This allows you to see what topics have been modified recently. Therefore you can track those projects/clients/topics that interest you.
The participation threshold is very low. You don't have to learn any formatting codes. Links to other topics are created by smashing words together LikeSo or putting them in brackets [LikeThis]. (No bothersome href's to type).
I'd recommend UseMod Wiki [usemod.com] because it's simple to setup (it's perl-based and doesn't rely on a fancy DBMS on the backend) and it is fairly free of 'creeping featuritis' which plague some of the other Wiki products.
Re:Wiki Absolutely! (Score:3, Informative)
Features you really want in a Wiki/Weblog
Recommendations for getting it in use
My company personally uses OpenWiki [openwiki.com] backed by Microsoft SQL 2000 (you can leave it with the default of a Jet 4.0 database).
What I did to jumpstart usage is started a few good wiki pages, such as PhoneBook and SoftWare. Places where we could keep track of phone numbers, and upload all the software we deploy around.
That was about 2 months ago, and it started with around 10 pages, it is now well above 500 pages, and growing everyday. And many of the pages are long (50+ pages printed out) full of great documentation.
TWiki (Score:2, Informative)
More than Wiki (Score:1)
slashcode (Score:1)
you should use slashcode as soon as you figure out a way to patch it to reject idiotic 'Ask <small startup>'.
please share your patch.
: |
Choices (Score:2, Informative)
A blog can be a good choice to start with though, as they'll handle the whole user authentification, security (if your blog of choice DOES security), templates, etc etc etc.
As a developer of Geeklog, we do have a security system, based on the typical *nix model of users and groups, along with the ability to use these through a quasi-friendly plugin api
If it's a fairly open staffing/documentation setup over there, I'd recommend a wiki. PHPWiki is pretty good from experience, and now does handle user logins.
What, you want Everything? (Score:1)
Not particularly difficult to implement.
PostNuke (Score:3, Informative)
it does all phpnuke does plus
there is more, but i think you get the idea.
Re:PostNuke (Score:2)
Re:PostNuke (Score:3, Informative)
FWIW, the first thing I do is turn off that behaviour - PHP can quickly be tightened down at the master configuration level, and loosened for 3rd party scripts that were written with the less secure model in mind.
For any script longer than a few dozen lines, you should lock down PHP, an easy task, but one that really needs to be done *before* you start coding.
--
Evan
The trick is getting them to use it (Score:4, Insightful)
Ultimately the major barrier was typing speed. When it takes 10 times longer to type something in than to mention it at the next department lunch, they tend not to bother. I left that place before I ever implemented a solution. We tried providing a touch-typing tutorial CD, but few staff could be bothered running it.
The second most major barrier is that people value their knowledge and wish to keep it to themselves. These sorts of automated, souless information repositories don't help -- specifically, thinking that some big tech-oriented buzzword will allow turnover to stay at 50%pa without the company eventually being full only of people that don't know what they're doing does tend to re-enforce the belief that staff are not considered valuable as individuals.
If you find a solution, let me know.
Re:The trick is getting them to use it (Score:1)
Re:The trick is getting them to use it (Score:1)
Peoples karma could then be brought up at their performance reviews.
Seriously now that I think about it, if people got some recogition for sharing useful knowledge (rather than just slashdot karma whoring) that could motivate people to share more. Leave out the Anonymous Coward though - I doubt your boss would appreciate 'first post' and 'hot grits' trolls on a work system.
And the moderation system could be configured so that highly rated bits of info hang round while the crap would just fade out over time.
Of course it would probably help if the system wasn't just a weblog (nobody would just view that), but part of a bigger system so the comments could get attached to a real world 'object' in the company - ie a project or a budget or a client etc.
You want Everything (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You want Everything (Score:2)
Re:You want Everything (Score:1)
phpwiki [sourceforge.net]
(in perl) usemod wiki [usemod.com].
There are dozens more clones [c2.com].
General KM functionality (Score:3, Informative)
I've put a lot of time into investigating KM and how people can derive benefit from it. Here are some things you should look out for:
Take a look at KeyNote [pdi.net], its a free note manager, and unfortunately not networked, but has many of the requirements for a really good knowledge manager.
around here (Score:1)
Re:around here (Score:2)
The whole point of a KM solution is to act as a central repository for "stuff" (project status, project documents, FAQs, internal processes...) so that nothing gets lost, nothing goes floating off into space. I know it's not a silver bullet, but every little bit helps.
Re:around here (Score:2)
I agree. Email works too, but email isn't centrally archived and isn't searchable by everyone (except for the email admin, ideally).
So set up a mailing list instead. It's still email, and it's archived, threaded and searchable.
Re:around here (Score:2)
Or a shared IMAP directory... something I need to do this week for managing tasks. :)
--
Evan
We tried phpNuke (Score:1)
As it was I think I had one developer who regularly posted things, and most who either didn't check it, or only read it when I sent out an email announcing downtime and pointing at the page for more information.
Something like Everything2 would be nice, but (correct me if I'm wrong), you kind of rely on people building up the links to disparate nodes/topics. As a place to store notes/information/real details about particular topics it seems like it might be a bit lacking.
The only other solutions I'm personally familiar with are basically simple cgi scripts that append notes to a flat file and display it. I use something like that for sysadmin notes as it's better then a text file, but that's about the best endorsement I can give it....
I'd be interested to see what something like php nuke or slash could do if you had support in a small company to use it.
The real problem is forcing people to use it. (Score:3, Interesting)
To get people to use it, i had to turn into a bitchy hard-ass.
Whenever someone had a bug they wanted fixed i went "Have you entered it in the Bugzilla? No? Then i don't know anything about it."
In short, i refused to fix any bug unless it was entered into the bugzilla.
Now, i was in a position where i was able to do this without the risk of getting fired. (Although i felt a little uncertain about this at times... especially when my boss claimed it was too much work for him to be bothered to use the bugzilla, when he could just talk directly to me. )
Of course, once people got used to Bugzilla, they started liking it.
After all, in the end it's about making it easier for everyone to obtain information and do useful work.
You just have to get over the acceptance threshold.
Unfortunately, a bit of forcing is required to change the ways people work, and not everyone is in the position to do this.
PostNuke (Score:2, Informative)
Weblogs and Wikis and KM, oh my (Score:1)
PikiePikie [darktech.org] is another possibility, a GPL wiki simple enough to hack on yourself (Python), and it also can put a weblog on any page.
You might also find my Wiki Weblog PIM [ourpla.net] page of interest, it links to many relevant resources.