Extacit Wiki - Recently Updated Pageshttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/pageSearch/updatedRecently Updated Pages on http://extacit.wetpaint.comen-usinfo@wetpaint.comSat, 09 Feb 2008 20:35:57 CSTSat, 09 Feb 2008 20:35:57 CSTwetpaint.com60Extacit Wikihttp://www.wetpaint.com/img/logo.gifhttp://extacit.wetpaint.comKnowledge Management, Collaborative Learning & ResearchSupervisor Meetingshttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Supervisor+Meetingsmooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Supervisor+MeetingsSat, 09 Feb 2008 20:35:57 CSTHere is the meeting schedule for my dissertation. Click on the links in the meeting log field to view the full meeting transcript.

Meeting #
Date
Time
Meeting Log
1
25/09/2007
17:30 - 19:00
2
04/10/2007
19:00 - 20:00
3
11/10/2007
19:00 - 20:00
4
25/10/2007
19:00 - 20:00
5
01/11/2007
19:00 - 20:30
6
08/11/2007
19:00 - 20:00
7
15/11/2007
19:00 - 20:00
8
22/11/2007
19:00 - 20:00
9
06/12/2007
19:00 - 20:00
10
13/12/2007
19:00 - 20:00
Supervisor Meeting 10
11
31/01/2008
19:00 - 20:00
Supervisor Meeting 11

]]>Dissertationhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Dissertationmooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/DissertationSat, 09 Feb 2008 20:05:36 CSTThe latest version of the dissertation document is attached to this page.

To open the document, click on the latest version at the bottom of this page in the attachments section.

]]>Supervisor Meeting 9http://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Supervisor+Meeting+9mooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Supervisor+Meeting+9Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:44:38 CST
Date 06/12/2007
Time 19:00 - 20:00
Material submitted OnePlace Pilot Plan - Open
Date of next meeting
Meeting Worklog (Work completed as a result of meeting) Worklog 8

Discussion:




Agreed tasks for next meeting:




Comments:





]]>Worklog 8http://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Worklog+8mooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Worklog+8Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:35:40 CST
Period 22/11/07 - 29/11/07
Supervisor Meeting Supervisor Meeting 8

1. The pilot is almost ready now, the final technical arrangements are being made and a final meeting will take place next week to agree the Pilot Schedule. see attached document OnePlace Pilot Plan.doc

2. I have identified my pilot groups (see Pilot Plan Document). I will discuss these with you on Thursday.

3. I have begun recording the Anecdotes of my user groups in order to capture their use-cases as my base business requirements for the Pilot.

4. I am in discussions with the owners of the SDLC process to investigate the ability to template documentation using the wiki portal.

5. The survey to the 4,000 has gone out today, and I should hopefully have access to the results in the coming 2 weeks.

6. I will be in Kevin Street all day on Thursday to work on my dissertation document. I hope to make porgress on the existing chapters I have started, and also to spec out the Pilot section. I will discuss this with you on thursday.

]]>Worklogshttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Worklogsmooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/WorklogsTue, 04 Dec 2007 10:34:11 CSTSupervisor meetings. Click on the link in the Worklog column to view the full transcript.

Supervisor Meeting
Period
Worklog
1
25/09/07 - 04/10/07
2
04/10/07 - 11/10/07
3
11/10/07 - 25/11/07
4
25/10/07 - 01/11/07
5
01/11/07 - 08/11/07
6
08/11/07 - 15/11/07
7
15/11/07 - 22/11/07
8
22/11/07 - 06/12/07

]]>The Ideahttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/The+Ideamooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/The+IdeaSun, 25 Nov 2007 11:33:24 CSTThe high level concept for this dissertation was to examine ways of improving collaboration, knowledge capture, and knowledge sharing in the enterprise. This was relevant to both the projects we work on and in the day-to-day tasks we complete.

The following table describes the type of collaborative scenarios which I want to address:
Explicit
Tacit
Individual
 Documents, eMails eMails, Telephone Conversations, Face-to-Face conversations
Community (Social)
 Shared Folders, eMails, Workshop Materials, Meeting Minutes Wiki, RSS, Workshops, Discussion Forums.


Explicit Knowledge - "is knowledge that has been or can be articulated, codified, and stored in certain media. It can be readily transmitted to others. The most common forms of explicit knowledge are manuals, documents and procedures"

Tacit Knowledge - "is knowledge that people carry in their minds and is, therefore, difficult to access. Often, people are not aware of the knowledge they possess or how it can be valuable to others. Tacit knowledge is considered more valuable because it provides context for people, places, ideas, and experiences. Effective transfer of tacit knowledge generally requires extensive personal contact and trust"

The big challenge for organisations is to make the tacit knowledge of their employees social - i.e that the culture within the organisation encourages the voluntary sharing of knowledge. The use of an enterprise wiki, where individuals can freely contribute to and participate in collaborative knowledge creation can help to embed this culture.

For me, the most important table-cell above is the social-tacit one. The aim with our wiki pilot, as well as showing how wiki use can facilitate the social-explicit (project documentation and workflow), is to explore how we can encourage the use of the wiki as a platform for innovation, collaboration and a more social approach to discussion within the enterprise.

]]>Metricshttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Metricsdamiantgordonhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/MetricsfredThu, 22 Nov 2007 13:01:32 CSTMetrics are a very important part of the dissertation. It allows me to measure the success or otherwise of the Wiki Portal when the pilot is being run. In order to design what metrics structure I will apply to the pilot, I will need to figure out what it is I want to measure.

Some obvious things are:
  • Usage Volumes - The number of users engaging with the system, the number of pages being created, the number of edits and many more. These will be easy to track, as the confluence wiki engine already captures these details.
  • HCI Data - I want to measure the users perception of the wiki-portal. Ease of use, presentation, navigation, and personalisation will be important here.


Some Useful Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_scorecard
http://www.csc.com/aboutus/leadingedgeforum/knowledgelibrary/uploads/1133_1.pdf
http://www.archives.gov/research/alic/reference/organizational-change-bibliography/benchmarking.html
http://www.archives.gov/research/alic/reference/organizational-change-bibliography/performance-measurement.html

]]>Collaborationhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Collaborationmooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/CollaborationThu, 22 Nov 2007 12:43:05 CST
“Collaboration is a structured, recursive process where two or more people work together toward a common goal......by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus”

Collaboration is about more than just simply working together on a project. It embodies the communication, understanding and knowledge sharing which contributes to successful working methods.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence therefore, is not an act but a habit” – Aristotle.

As organisations become increasingly dispersed both geographically and functionally, new challenges are emerging for those trying to embed a collaborative culture in their working environment. People have also contributed to this, in the way in which their working habits and interaction with technology such as email and documents have emerged in the past 10 to 15 years.

Consider the diagram in Figure X below, this is a typical situation in a project whereby the flow of information related to the tasks which must be completed is “bottlenecked” through one person – the project manager or team leader:



In this scenario, the only person who has a full view of what is happening is the project manager. This then makes this individual the key to the success of communication and collaboration required to complete all tasks. However, with so much information (emails, and documents) to manage, this individual will struggle to focus on the most important tasks because they will suffer from “information overload”. It also detracts from the knowledge of the other participants, as they only see a small siloed view of the project.

The “Wiki-Way” (figure X) suggests that the information/content related to the tasks of a project is more important than the organisation and function of the people involved. Each participant can equally view all relevant information (which they are permitted to view based on their role) without having to request it or having to search through their email inbox for it.



Now, the burden of managing multiple streams of communication is removed from the project manager. Each participant on the project can keep up-to-date with what is happening automatically through notification and the “dashboard” on the wiki homepage.

The project manager can now focus on what is most important – managing the project. This same theory can be applied to many other scenarios other than pure project collaboration. The same can work for group secretaries, committee members, or even local team wiki’s.

There are many lessons to be learned from the popularity of the social networking sites which have emerged over the last 10 years. People are attracted by the base principle that these sites facilitate our need to be socially connected. The personal pages which are the homepage for each individual make the interaction familiar and easy to use. The notification services allow individuals to keep up-to-date with what is happening in their “network”.

These benefits or best practices can be used within the enterprise (Enterprise 2.0), to allow people to connect with each other based on a functional requirement to participate on a project or group. They can easily share documents with others without having to email them to every participant. They can comment on and update content as required without the traditional delays of the “pass the parcel” with document versioning etc.

]]>Supervisor Meeting 8http://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Supervisor+Meeting+8mooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Supervisor+Meeting+8Thu, 22 Nov 2007 11:16:55 CST
Date 22/11/07
Time 19:00
Material submitted Organisational Culture - Open
Behavioural Differences Between Generations - Open
Date of next meeting 29/11/07
Meeting Worklog (Work completed as a result of meeting) Worklog 8

Discussion:

Organistional Culture piece started, mentioning the definition of OC, email/office and tasks, future needs as business environments change.


Agreed tasks for next meeting:

Add to existing literature review pieces:

Organisational Culture
  • Differences in Culture (Open/Transparent/Closed/Small/Large)

Behavioural Differences Between Generations
  • Give examples
  • Quote White-Papers
  • Look at Case Studies


Comments:





]]>Worklog 7http://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Worklog+7mooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Worklog+7Thu, 22 Nov 2007 11:13:33 CST
Period 15/11/07 - 22/11/07
Supervisor Meeting Supervisor Meeting 7

Organisational Culture Chapter - Open

Behavioural Differences between Generations - Open

]]>Genrational Behavioural Differenceshttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Genrational+Behavioural+Differencesmooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Genrational+Behavioural+DifferencesThu, 22 Nov 2007 11:05:51 CST
Baby Boomers – “A baby boomer is a person born between 1946 and 1964 in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, or Australia. Following World War II, these countries experienced an unusual spike in birth rates, a phenomenon commonly known as the baby boom”. (Wikipedia - Baby Boomer)

Generation Y – “The term Generation Y first appeared in an August 1993 magazine AD Age editorial to describe those children born between 1981 and 1995. The scope of the term has changed greatly since then, to include, in many cases, anyone born as early as 1976 and late as 2000. There is still no precise definition of years, some theorists also place a cusp generation MTV generation between X and Y, 1975–1987”. (Wikipedia - Generation Y)

The social interaction and learning habits of today’s graduates are very different to those of the baby-boomer directors and senior managers trying to lead and manage them. Socially, the world has changed a lot since the introduction of the World Wide Web, mobile phones and instant messaging in the nineties.

Added to these are the more recent social networking tools of the “naughties” such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, YouTube, Flickr and many more. Even the learning traits and the availability of information on the web allows these “millennial” students to find and consume information much easier than for their superiors in the sixties and seventies. Web2.0 sites such as Slideshare, Wikipedia, and the millions of blogs in the blogoshpere allow them to keep up-to-date with what is happening much more rapidly.

They are the most connected generation there has been. They can communicate, track, share, edit, search, and contribute to the collective social computing phenomenon. They learn how to interact with technologies much faster than their predecessors, and react to change much easier.

]]>Organisational Culturehttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Organisational+Culturemooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Organisational+CultureThu, 22 Nov 2007 10:39:35 CST
“Organisational culture, or corporate culture, comprises the attidues, experiences, beliefs and values of an organisation. It has been defined as "the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organisation and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organisation. Organisational values are beliefs and ideas about what kinds of goals members of an organisation should pursue and ideas about the appropriate kinds or standards of behavior organisational members should use to achieve these goals. From organisational values develop organisational norms, guidelines or expectations that prescribe appropriate kinds of behavior by employees in particular situations and control the behavior of organisational members towards one another” ( Wikipedia definition for Organisational Culture )

Organisational culture can differ from country to country, or between different industries. It is important for leaders in these organisations to create and develop the right culture for their employees to work within. HR Directors must understand the dynamics of the organisations culture in order to implement cultural change programs that are aligned to the overall strategic goals of the organisation itself.

This is very important when it comes to collaboration and communication in the enterprise. There are many processes, projects and workflows within the daily operations of large organisations which require employees to collaborate with each-other. This presents challenges to the leaders in the organisation in terms of providing the employees with the correct tool-set to achieve these tasks.

The combination of email and the MS Office suite brought with it many advantages. Asynchronous communication and delivery of information in the form of documents (Word Docs, Spreadsheets, Presentations, and Project Plans) helped to reduce the amount of work involved in getting tasks as part of a project completed.

Unfortunately, the mis-use/over reliance on email within organisations is actually hampering the efforts of employees to get their jobs done. Tasks such as document review and sign-off can sometimes run as follows:

  1. An individual creates a document, e.g. Functional Specification, for a project.
  2. They email it as an attachment to the relevant stakeholders, requesting that they review the documents and reply with any comments by a certain date.
  3. The stakeholders receive the mail (one of many they may receive that day) and decide to review it later, but some may forget to do so.
  4. Over the following days, the document owner receives a few replies with comments or requests for updates. This can be difficult to follow as each comment is in a separate mail. Some stakeholders have not responded.
  5. The author once again, updates the document, with all suggested changes and sends it out once more for final review and sign-off.
  6. Once again, some reply with their sign-offs (each a separate mail which often then have to be saved to disk for regulatory purposes) and still some do not respond.
  7. In order to progress the project to the next phase, the document owner (with the help of the project manager) now must start “Sign-Off Chase” those stakeholders who have not yet responded.
  8. In the end, the document author has all their sign-offs, but it has taken much longer than the original time-scale they had planned

If the culture in the organisation is such that their employees do not respond to requests such as document review or sign-off in a reasonable manner, then there will be un-necessary delays encountered by the project managers or document authors in getting tasks completed and progressed to the next phases every time they work on a project.

As business environments grow more competitive and advances in technologies such as web2.0 move us towards real-time collaboration & communications, the term “speed to market” is driving IT leaders to deliver more efficient tools to the workforce.



]]>Supervisor Meeting 7http://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Supervisor+Meeting+7mooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Supervisor+Meeting+7Thu, 22 Nov 2007 09:54:02 CST
Date 15/11/2007
Time 19:00 - 20:00
Material submitted None
Date of next meeting 22/11/2007
Meeting Worklog (Work completed as a result of meeting) Worklog 7

Discussion:

  • Reviewed Pilot presentation and road forward.
  • Looked at 4 potential implementation scenarios for the pilot. (ECW DA, Workshops, Team, Conference Call 300) Metrics - Usage, Survey, Interviews. Comparing a wiki-based workshop to a similar workshop pre-implementation.
  • Information Overload
  • Pilot may reveal hidden/unforseen benfits that may or may not be specific to how we designed/sold/implemented the concept.


Agreed tasks for next meeting:

  • Saturday & Thursday Lit review.
  • Tidy-Up Introduction.
  • Get Defined roadmap for Pilot.


Comments:





]]>Supervisor Meeting 6http://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Supervisor+Meeting+6mooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Supervisor+Meeting+6Thu, 22 Nov 2007 09:52:37 CST
Date 08/11/2007
Time 19:00 - 20:00
Material submitted ECW DA Presentation (powerpoint slide deck)

Extacit Blog Post
Selling Knowledge Management - Language is Key!
Date of next meeting 15/11/2007
Meeting Worklog (Work completed as a result of meeting) Worklog 6

Discussion:

Sharepoint vs. Wiki -- not much research out there on this topic...

eMail collobration and Workflow Group presentation


Agreed tasks for next meeting:

1. Literature review, completed most parts,

2. Introduction tidied up

3. Will you create a page called "Metrics" for us,
and another called "Survey Design" for discussion ?


Comments:





]]>Worklog 5http://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Worklog+5mooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Worklog+5Thu, 22 Nov 2007 09:48:51 CST
Period 01/11/07 - 08/11/07
Supervisor Meeting Supervisor Meeting 5


Discussion:

Meaning of the word "Dashboard" and what relevance it has to the wiki front page. It is usually understood to be some aggregated mosaic of statistics from multiple sources, which managers and project managers use to quickly analyse project status through visual displays.

Wiki Vs Sharepoint
http://www.schwall.de/dl/20030828_the_wiki_way.pdf
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=14929
http://www.flexwiki.com/default.aspx/FlexWiki/WikiAndSharePoint.html
http://www.socialtext.com/files/DrKW%20Case%20Study.pdf


Tasks:

Create a list of reasons why the CaptialMarkets group are going with
SharePoint ::: 1. their reasons + 2. why you think they did it?

Identify words you are using to talk to managers and technicians;
"one", "reuse", "rework", "Space", etc. -- lexicon
(translator between web2.0 land and the older people who are "out of date")

Tim Berner Lee original conception of the web

Other grassroots adoptions of Web 2.0
-- sole contributor, etc.

]]>Worklog 6http://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Worklog+6mooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Worklog+6Thu, 22 Nov 2007 09:39:32 CST
Period
Supervisor Meeting Supervisor Meeting 6

]]>Survey Designhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Survey+Designmooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Survey+DesignSun, 11 Nov 2007 16:50:40 CSTIn order to truly examine the acceptance of Wiki as an enterprise collaboration portal, I need to interview and capture responses from many individuals.

Up-to now, I have mostly been dealing with individuals with the power to make decisions on whether wiki adoption is a good idea. I think that interviews will be the best way to capture their opinion on the adoption of the portal.

The most important participants in my dissertation in terms of data collection will be the "knowledge workers" who will actually have to use the system. I think that a survey will suit this process as I will be able to compare their responses across a number of categories.

]]>Researchhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Researchmooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/ResearchSun, 11 Nov 2007 16:43:01 CSTThis section covers the relevant areas that I have been researching as I porgress the dissertation.

Ideas - The original 2 ideas I was working from.

Dissertation Propsal - The original proposal submitted.

Web 2.0 - A look at wiki, blogs, etc.

Case Studies - A look at some relevant case studies.

Metrics - How will the success or otherwise of the Wiki Portal be measured?

Survey Design - Structured and unstructured interviews and surveys to be used.

]]>The Wiki Pilothttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/The+Wiki+Pilotmooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/The+Wiki+PilotMon, 05 Nov 2007 18:25:50 CSTThe idea of the pilot is to demonstrate the capabilities of enterprise wiki software that is available at this time. I want to demonstrate to the stakeholders responsible for the O&T Community in which I work in that social computing can provide many benefits to our organisation.

Collaboration is the important factor in the excercise. I want to show how the concept of "OnePlace" we can provide a workspace for our colleagues to capture, organise, update, and share knowledge with each other. The in-built features will also allow for an overlay of context to the content which forms the wiki. Tagging and commenting will provide this "extra" layer which many knowledge management systems lacked in the past.

I intend to download the enterprise wiki - Confluence - and make it available to chosen groups to see how they use the wiki as part of their work.

There are 3 ideas to this:

  1. Allow a team to setup a workspace for their documentation, meeting agendas, FAQ's etc so that they can organise the information that they use often in a way that best suits them.
  2. Allow a project team to use the wiki to host the documentation required for the project. They can structure the space according to the stages of the project, focusing on the key deliverables and enabling them to provide a rich interface to the project docuementation.
  3. Host a 300-person conference call using a special wiki space as the visual aid for this. This will allow the organisors of the call to provide context and textual back-up to the spoken words during the exercise.

]]>Wiki use in the Enterprisehttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Wiki+use+in+the+Enterprisemooneycolhttp://extacit.wetpaint.com/page/Wiki+use+in+the+EnterpriseMon, 05 Nov 2007 18:15:58 CSTThere are many uses for wiki in the enterprise. These vary depending on the underlying decision for adopting enterprise and the business in which it serves.

A few examples are:

  • Intranet - many organisations are using wikis to publish their intranet content as this allows for real-time editing of information so as to keep information that is available as up-to-date as possible.
  • Extranet - Like wikis.sun.com, many organisations are realising the power of the customer as the prosumer, and how actively engaging with your customer community can help you keep in touch with their needs while providing the forum for feedback and communication in the new social computing era.
  • Collaborative Documentation - Wiki's allow for multiple users to edit a single piece of content. Wiki provides an in-built facility to track changes and roll-back to previous versions. This avoids the complications of sharing documents using email or complex check-in/check-out functions of traditional document repostiories.
  • Collaboration Spaces - Wikis can be used as free spaces for brainstorming and idea generation. Participants can contribute to the content, comment on it or easily review or read the content and take part in the process.
  • Meetings - Wikis are a great method of setting up a single space for meetings or workshops. The agenda, list of attendees, and any supporting material can all be stored and organised in one single location. Participants are then invited to view and keep track of this workspace upto and after the evnet takes place. This can greatly reduce the time spent chasing emails and documents which are relevant to a meeting.

]]>