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Introduction to Wikis Tutorials

Wikis at Work / Project Management




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In this section, let's talk about a project management wiki. So what are the goals of project management? Keeping the expectations of the project in line with the reality of the project, preparing for future enhancements in projects ahead of time and developing and growing the team capabilities as you go. How can wiki help a project manager effectively achieve these goals? If you've ever managed a project from small to large, you know it really can be a struggle to keep your ducks in a row, so to speak. Development of successful projects requires a multitude of individuals with different roles forming a cohesive team to work effectively. Now, think about that for a second. A multitude of individuals with different roles forming a team. It sounds to me like that's a great fit for wiki technology. Wikis can serve as an online scheduler, a task manager, file storage, a to-do list that can be updated on the fly, communication tools and as a meeting minutes for those meetings that you need to post notes to the team right away so they know what they need to do. A wiki allows remote team members to contribute their testing results and methodologies to the team. They don't have to be there in person. They can contribute effectively wherever they are. Now, I've got some great resources here for developing a project management wiki. The first one I want to show you is ITtoolbox project management wiki and I really do feel that it's got a wealth of tools and ideas for anybody that's interested in project management wikis and I'm just going to switch to my browser here and I've got it up here in the browser and the link is http colon slash slash knowledge management dot ITToolbox.com slash wiki. So as I browse through this page, I just want to show you a few things that I really do find neat on this wiki. You'll see they've got different categories for different ideas, different concepts that they want to share with their users; everything from Adobe Acrobat and blogs, all the way down to workplace customization. Then we get into different categories like collaboration, different collaboration methods from planning software to collaboration suites, email, so just tons of ideas. This page really does go on and on and on. I'm just going to pick one out here and show you what we've got working here and I'm just going to pick out the category of pdf and this wiki has done some really cool things. They've got different links, different definitions that are listed there, the page can be edited and on some pages, for example, I will come back up to the very top, check out the Adobe Acrobat page. They've actually got related content linked; white papers and webcasts that relate to the topic of Adobe Acrobat and then different community content that ties it all in together. So this wiki is really a great example of a wiki that is tying different things together. You've got your white papers, you've got your definitions, you've got your different content. Each particular aspect of this different project is all tied in together on this wiki in different topics. So I encourage you to check this out if you're interested in a really cool, put together project management wiki. The next one I'm going to show you is the Nash project wiki. I feel like it's a really good example of what can be done in a working, evolving project. So I'm just going to go back to my browser and click here. Nash is an open-source Flash viewer and it is evolving project that is going on right now and they're using a project wiki to pull everything together. So I'll just show you here. This is being put up by the developer of the project and you'll see here the different projects that they've got going on right now. They've got Nash, they've got a Nash media server, some different things going on and a dedicated project management page. And you'll see here they've got different tasks that they've got going on here. They've got debuggers, GUIs, back ends, multimedia support, different things that people are working on and they've got their resources listed here and the tasks, the things that they've already done. For example, they've got listed here as of right now that they need a developer website to contain the wiki, more mailing lists, etcetera, etcetera. So they're letting people know that are involved in the project what they need done and this is a really great idea for a project management wiki because it can be updated as those things are completed and then updated with new things that need to be done. So the last thing I want to show you is the Track project, which is an actual wiki that is designed for project management and issue tracking for a software development project. Now, here we are on their page and it's trac, t-r-a-c.edgewall.org and there you're actually using the wiki software on this page. Very slick looking, very nice and clean and you'll see here that they have integrated a timeline, which is a very important function for a project management wiki or any project management software. They've got an integrated roadmap. You can see here that they've got a milestone and then a bar that shows their closed and active tickets. Tickets are for problems that have been reported and they're opened and closed. And then you can see the view tickets, you can see all the different tickets that they have open right now. So this is really cool technology if you are in the project management field. It really can help you get things done. Now, I hope I've shown you some things that will help you decide if a project management wiki is right for your company and some resources to get it done.

Tutorial Information

Course: Introduction to Wikis
Author: Dawn Dunkerly
SKU: 33853
ISBN: 1-934743-52-6
Release Date: 2008-02-27
Duration: 3.5 hrs / 58 lessons
Captions: For Online University members only
Compatibility: Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux
QuickTime 7, Flash 8

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