Care of the ELSUA KM blog, a heads up that the results of a survey on enterprise wikis are now available. Some initial conclusions:
- The main reason affecting the choice of a wiki clearly is the simplicity of use and implementation. The expense is only a very small factor.
- The main problem is the lack of participation of the intended users. Almost half of the participants had to deal with this problem at least temporarily. Thus the encouragement of the employees is an important item to add to the success of the wiki.
Interesting that previously we have heard from the Motorola experience that a bottom-up implementation was easy to achieve. However, this survey suggests that this may not be the experience for everyone.
BTW I'd also like to extend my thanks to Tim Bartel for his efforts and for sharing the results.
Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Software, Tim Bartel, Wikis
That's not exactly contradictory - in many places wiki usage is a grassroot story.
ReplyDeleteI do not know the Motorola case, but I bet there were bottom-up "wiki evangelists" who have spoken to their co-workers and told them why the wiki is such a useful tool, because they like the wiki themself.
But most probably you won't be able to gain success by establishing a wiki through management without additional employee encouragement.
In some cases I had seen, the wiki was "maintained" by only a few people, which encouraged the other employees to use it (with success). But if those "guides" had spare time, also the overall wiki usage (at least the writing part) broke in.