The midden

Nathan Wallace describes in a recent blog posting how his organisation changed the culture of the company by moving away from a traditional, static Intranet site to a wiki. In doing so, they were able to transform communication, information flow and knowledge management within the organisation.

The success of the project was due partly to a perceived need and general dissatisfaction with the former Intranet site. This was controlled by a few, information was frequently out-of-date and trust in the information was low. The simplicity, usability and sense of ownership of the wiki has meant a steady increase in contributions, collaboration and trust in the information and content held. All announcements are now made through the wiki, reducing email overload. There is an increasing stock of business information and content all held in the one place rather than being scattered throughout peoples’ email boxes. This not only provides a more efficient content management system and reference for current staff, but also provides a valuable resource for new employees.

Although this case study describes a researched-based pharmaceutical company, the model is equally valid for educational institutions. The wiki used is an enterprise wiki called Confluence.