Collaboration Tools for Cross-Site Development?

Coordinator asks: "The company I work for has software development activities going in in several sites located around the world. We are looking for tools to help with cross-site collaboration. I am concerned about a one solution fits all approach, as well as something that requires too much time and effort to maintain on the part of our existing developers. A commercial product, or an open source product with a good support base would be very reasonable. What experiences have others had when trying to build a cross-site development environment either from scratch, or with existing tools or vendors. We are looking at some of the obvious places like sourceforge.net, gforge.org, and collab.net. Furthermore, we are looking at content management systems for knowledge base solutions such as TikiWiki or egroupware."

Comments

Disabuse yourself of a few misconceptions first

[Paul Bain]

This is an important question, and I am glad that you have asked it. I suggest, however, that you disabuse yourself of a few misconceptions first. You wrote:

we are looking at content management systems [CMS's] for knowledge base solutions such as TikiWiki or egroupware.

A CMS is not meant to help you manage knowledge, unless the CMS is hybrid software that is meant to be one-half CMS and one-half knowledge management system (KMS). I know a great deal about open source CMS's, and I do not know of any that are such hybrids. Furthermore, Wikis are generally not true CMS's, but, rather, one-half CMS and one-half "community-ware," software meant to faciliate the building of an on-line community. See my prior comment on the desirability of using such hybrid software.

What is the purpose of a CMS? To make it possible for a non-technical user to build and maintain a web site by herself without the help of a web professional such as a web designer or web developer. The purpose of a true, non-hybrid CMS is to help you manage content, not knowledge. Content contains knowledge , of course, but groupware (see below) stores and re-uses that knowledge in a completely different way.

As to knowledge management (KM), consider a prior Slashdot story and one of the best comments thereunder, which derides the whole notion of KMS's.

Note that some types of groupware (software that faciliates collaboration) include excellent KM, especially Lotus Notes. The KM in MS Exchange, the leading competitor to Notes, is much weaker.

In summary, all too often, people confuse these types of web software applications: CMS, KMS, "community-ware," Document Management systems, and groupware. Furtheremore, hybrid software often fails because a hybrid often tries to do too much. A software designer maximizes his chances of producing good software by not trying to do too much and by aiming at attainable goals. In general, a designer should design his CMS to manage content, not also to facilitate the building of an on-line community or to facilitate collaboration.