| Company: | WebWorks.com |
| Location: | Austin, Texas, USA |
| Purpose: | Multiple wikis to support different parts of the business |
WebWorks.com, an Austin, Texas-based division of Quadralay Corporation, is the developer of the ePublisher platform, a product that allows users to take information created in nearly any format, then convert and publish that content to a wide range of digital delivery formats, including, MediaWiki, MoinMoin, and Confluence.
WebWorks.com considers itself a “wiki-driven company,” not because it produces wiki software, but because wikis have become an integral part of the way the company operates and conducts business with its customers. At the time of writing, the company had five active wikis, three of them open to the public, one shared with select customers, and one that is purely internal.
The company installed its first wiki in 2003 as a way for the software development team to share information and collaborate across different design and development disciplines. Based on the success of the development team wiki, in 2005 the company’s Services Group selected the Project Trac solution, with its built-in wiki, as a way to enable collaboration and improve communication with select customers, who were often located in different time zones and countries.
In 2007, the company standardized on the MoinMoin wiki platform and the development wiki was expanded to become a company wide “inner wiki” replacing the static HTML intranet. Later that year the company launched its first external wiki, a “Help Center” wiki where customers could exchange information with the support and development teams, as well as help each other out on projects or post general usage tips and tricks.
The next website to make the move to a wiki was the one used to promote and organize the company’s annual users conference. In 2008, WebWorksRoundup.com made the transition from a traditional HTML-based website to a wiki. This made it quick and easy both for conference organizers to update the site and for speakers to add biographical information and presentation abstracts without editorial or process bottlenecks.
In 2009, the company made good on a promise delivered at the previous year’s user conference and published all their product documentation online in a public wiki (http://docs.webworks.com), allowing the user community to provide feedback and comments and giving the company a way to quickly test and incorporate suggestions in subsequent releases. At the time of writing, the documentation wiki includes information covering all supported versions of their products.
The company’s “inner wiki” is now used for every aspect of company business, and a cultural paradigm of “if it isn’t on the wiki, it doesn’t exist” has developed. In other words, the wiki has become the depository of record.
There was a surprisingly short learning curve for the wiki, with the initial staff training taking less than an hour. Subsequent updates, such as communicating changes from an upgrade, have usually been accomplished during a brown-bag lunch session. Using the inner wiki has drastically reduced the amount of time needed to bring new employees up to speed. Introducing new employees to the wiki established and cemented a company culture of open information flow and collaboration that helped reduce duplication of effort, brought down operational costs, and shortened sales cycles.
A survey of wiki usage undertaken in early 2009 revealed that 90% of the company employees had made at least one contribution to the inner wiki, 80% contributed about once a month, and 50% contributed once a week. These usage figures are exceptionally high and are a reflection of a small, technology-focused company whose core business is based on information exchange.
Another significant factor in driving such high usage rates is that the company’s senior management is fully committed to the use of wikis. They review contributions each day, provide regular feedback, and are among the top contributors. The open structure of the wiki also promotes cross-functional collaboration and information sharing.
The Help Center wiki was set up to promote information exchange with, and between, customers. As such it is an open, public wiki. The wiki was initially populated with articles written by WebWorks development and support engineers. Once the wiki was launched these groups have continued to add new content regularly.
One of the first lessons learned in setting up an open wiki was dealing with spam. It became quickly apparent that the wiki manager would need to set up a user login request and approval system. Today a user’s request is usually checked and approved in less than two hours.
It took a while for customers to start contributing, but persistence paid off. The initial indication that customers were using the wiki was when they started to reference, and provide links to, wiki articles in the independent users group mailing list. Gradually they started to request login approval. Growth is now steady, and at the time of writing there is usually at least one request a day. Customer contributions average about one a week. It also became clear that the wiki benefited from the development of “cheer leaders,” who saw the benefits of participation early and advocated using the wiki to the user community.
Another area that caused some initial concern was how to differentiate between what was official company information and what wasn’t. Various flagging schemes were discussed, and the company decided that the simplest solution would be to lock permissions on pages of official information so customers could only post comments, but leave discussions and un-tested information open to both editing and comments.
Moving the conference information from a static website to a wiki, then opening the wiki to conference organizers and giving restricted access to speakers, removed several bottlenecks and helped ensure that the website was kept up-to-date at all times. However, there were aspects of using the wiki that caused some small problems. It was harder to give the wiki-driven site the correct corporate look and feel; while it was easy to update text, graphics handling was not as sophisticated as an HTML-based site. In order to make it look more like a traditional website, WebWorks decided to turn off the visible wiki edit controls. This meant that contributors needed to take extra steps to login and make edits.
The services wiki was implemented to facilitate communications and knowledge sharing with customers during customer-driven custom development projects. The primary aim was to eliminate problems associated with multiple, parallel, and branching email trails. The wiki was designated as the single point of contact and official source of information on project status. Any communication outside the wiki was deemed to be unofficial. At the start of each project a one hour online web conference was held to establish guidelines and teach the customer how to use the wiki.
Information such as the project description, list of deliverables, contacts, notes, reference materials, and a deliverable log were uploaded to the wiki and could be updated by any member of the project team.
Even with training it took some customers a while to change their behavior and switch from sending project information in email. Some time was invested in transcribing customer email onto the wiki to demonstrate the advantages of having information in a single repository. However, once customers made the adjustments and everyone started working from the same data set, there were measurable decreases in the time taken to deliver tasks and resolve issues. Projects were delivered quicker, with little or no scope creep, and at less cost.
The rollout of the WebWorks documentation wiki was the culmination of a six-month project to rewrite the main product documentation set and use the company’s own product to publish it. The content was written using Structured FrameMaker and then used as a single source in conjunction with WebWorks ePublisher to simultaneously produce PDF, embedded online help, and wiki output.
The project was managed using the services wiki, with a phased release to test and review the wiki portion. As a first phase, invitations to the new wiki were restricted to recognized MVP-level users for review. After the input of these highly knowledgeable users, the wiki was opened up to anyone with a current active support account. Then, at the conclusion of further testing, it was opened up to the public at large. Now anyone who is approved for a login to the documentation wiki also gets automatic access to the Help Center wiki, and vice versa.
With each new release of the product, a snapshot of the latest state of the document wiki for the previous software version is taken and placed in its own section on the wiki. There are now separate wiki spaces with documentation for each supported version of the product.
A recent innovation has been linking the online help embedded in the product with the public documentation wiki. If the WebWorks ePublisher platform is installed on a computer with Internet access, then when a user opens an online help topic, the help system will check the corresponding topic on the wiki and flag the topic if the content has been updated on the wiki since product release or if there has been active discussion on that topic on the wiki.
Without the extensive use of wiki technology in all areas of its operations, WebWorks would not be able to work as efficiently as it does in supporting its partners and customers worldwide. Cross-functional collaboration, combined with knowledge sharing and listening to customers, is central to the company’s continued growth.