Slashdot Mirror
Knowledge Management for an IT Department?
Laurentiu asks: "In every IT department out there there's a wealth of heterogenous information floating around: code snippets, HOWTOs, FAQs, docs, spreadsheets, post-it notes etc. Asking Joe where he put that file won't work forever. So what is, in your experience, a good way to manage this knowledge? And what software would you recommend for such a task?"
Mac OS X's Spotlight does a pretty fine job of sifting through documents quick enough. Just commit everything to electronic form and give'r. Things need not be "organized", just indexed.
Best regards, A.C.
Bongos.
We've been using MediaWiki for this exact purpose: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki. It's easy to install, a snap to manage, and makes it easy to share your knowledge with the rest of the world if that's something you want to do.
heterogeneous (_not_ heterogenous) means "Consisting of dissimilar elements, parts, or ingredients -- opposed to homogeneous." (link)
When we need to know something at work, we call TripMaster Monkey! He knows everything!
Then search with Google Groups. There are thousands of abdanoned groups out there for you to choose from.
I don't have any system in place for knowledge management, but when someone comes to me and says they can't find a file, I ssh to our backup server, which holds every revision of every file ever stored on all our file servers, and use the locate utility to find the file.
Sounds like something that's perfect for a Wiki on an IT intranet.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
If security is a concern look for a business suited Wiki like TWIKI (twiki.org) which includes access levels and such.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Beleive it or not, Google Desktop search has saved me many a minutes of searching for opps manuals, work orders, business rule documents, log files, and many other assorted goodies. I'm not recommending it as a long term solution, but it works for short/mid range for small shops where the presure is on development.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/27/95759/4240 -- just be sure you have millions upon millions of dollars and at least twice the amount of time you really need. Other than that, it should be a simple deal!
The most important thing is to convince/allow people to spend time on internal documentation. If you can do this, it doesn't much matter what format the documentation is in, perhaps in a wiki or just version-controlled flat text.
http://www.google.com/enterprise/ Works wonders, all the power of google in a little box and anyone in the office *should* be able to use the search features :)
Software: moin-moin http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/. It worked well enough, easy to install, and it was easy to set up credentials and permissions for groups on the diretory and page level for editing and even visibility. It's easy to get in and make simple changes to the code and there's a bunch of modules available of varying quality, though.
Funny anecdote, our group's manager pulled a Lundberg: "I uhh like the program and it works well, but is there a WYSIWYG editor for it?" [Although somewhat idiosyncratic, Wiki markup is trivial to learn and use, HTML looks like C++ in comparison.]
ACHTUNG! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
I reckon the people suggesting Google are on the right track. For better or worse, search is how people navigate heterogenous information these days and I think you are wasting time if you try and work out some highfallutin classification system.
Doesn't have to be Google though - there are a pile of tools (htdig etc) that you can use to crawl your kb and provide a basic search ui.
At the risk of making this sound like an advertisement...
For the past 1 year, my company has been working on a solution for in-house knowledge management and collaboration/groupware for an organization. Our solution integrates the above with SMS notification, SyncML synchronization (calendar, contact list and todo list) for mobile devices as well as a web based email system. Since we develop it in-house, we are able to customize it for our clients.
If you're looking for a commercial product, you can find our contact information at langkah.com. If you're looking for something open source, then I guess you should probably go search for something on sourceforge.
Why not scan everything into pdf? Then you can use spotlight or google desktop to find it.
While we are probably going to end up with SharePoint (which isn't a bad collaboration tool if all your fellow staff members know is Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), I personally like the Plone Help Center. You can see examples on the Plone web site or on my personal web site.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
I always liked the idea of simple ascii commentary on ideas. and if you need to refer to something, well, use a link - people will 'get' that even if their ascii browsers don't.
I started in vax/vms with 'vaxnotes' and there was the notion of a base topic and its replies. it was simple, but it held the knowledge of DEC in a reasonable fashion, for many people, for many years.
then in the unix world, there was nntp/usenet. same basic idea. and also ascii-based. it scaled well and it worked well (and was well understood and simple enough to manage).
its worth considering. you can enable 'news' on linux boxes as clients (browsers) and servers. people can add (and edit and delete) content and its simple, free and best of all, it works.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
After taking over the developement for a telemarketing application, with no prior documentation, I immediately started a Wiki using OpenWIKI (they lean towards Microsoft servers for their stuff, so a basic IIS installation is all I had to work with), I convinced the admin guy to give me web space on it plus their SQL server, installed it and started entering everything I came across as I was either fixing or adding stuff. After about 3 months pretty much the entire system was documented to some degree, from the UI to nearly every technical aspect. Then, one of the execs found it, figured out how to add stuff, and now 8 months later it's probably 25% my stuff, and 75% is now full of up to date company practice and communication.
Task Mangler
I've been using for about a year a directory where I put a file named after each host I maintain. I and other admins add numbered entries about every non-trivial change we make, with timestamps. If there are machines with identical configuration, there is a file caled abcde.common that lists their common config. A wiki isn't a bad idea either, I guess.
I see several recommendations of Wikis, and I personally love the idea, but in a typical department/team setting, you end up woth email, Word, Excel, Visio, PowerPoint, HTML, .txt, .rtf, and a host of other files and file types generated for various reasons. Can any of the existing Wiki apps include these types of files? What I'm looking for is an app to not only catalog and store these files (ala Wiki) but also index the content (ala Google Desktop) so that the information contained within the files is easily searchable and accessible.
It's one thing to enter knowledge data into a Wiki (as most of the current Wiki implementations require) but ut us another to be able to have searchable access to the myriad of file types that get generated. Most of the current Wiki implementations are simply stunning in their capability, but can any really ieasily nclude, index, and search the varied data that offices generate?
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Without the risk of making this an advertisement... :)
My friend,for the past year has been creating a group collaboration/knowledgebase/project management/messaging/file management/group productivity software that will enable users to store and share information in a free-form, secure, linkable, fully searchable and easily updateable knowledge base that's perfect for jotting and sharing all sorts of information. Create a page on any topic at all; add pictures and links. Editing a page is just like using a word processor, unlike a wiki, where you have to tag lines. It's not a webpage but is part of a rich client with a word-processor like interface. Check out his website: http://www.vivraterra.com/ He created this app because he got exasparated with the lack of a software to manage the thing that matter most for a team: information.
Ideal solution: hire a good librarian. (Or "knowledge manager", as they prefer to be known.)
Google, Wiki, Notes and similar machinery are all well and good, but if you just let everybody stuff documents into the system, you'll end up with a large, undifferentiated heap of files in a dozen or more different formats. Ever tried searching for an Excel workbook with Wiki? A Visio file? An obscure CAD package file? An old CD-ROM of critical documentation in a proprietary format?
Managing documents is quite hard to do - fairly close to programming in terms of the skills needed. It doesn't happen on its own. It requires a cluey person who understands the business and the documents, who can classify and index the material as it comes in, and record where it is so that it can be found.
At the very least, it's a process that requires considerable thought, planning, and management. It needs to be viewed in that light - not "which search engine should I use?"
It seems to me like these may work for you:
http://www.ktdms.com/ -- Open Source
or
http://www.docushare.com/ -- $$$$$$$$ Xerox $$$$$$$$
I hope this was an error.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
My favorite: http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/
Confluence is just software ($4K + $2k/year); no hardware or hosting.
From the founders of Excite: http://www.jotspot.com/
Jotspot sells hosting w/ SSL ($9-$250/month) or remotely maintained appliances ($10K-$15K/year); no software.
BusinessWeek's choice: http://www.socialtext.com/
Socialtext sells software and hardware but no hosting (Can't remember the price range right now).
You might also want to look into search appliances such as Google's enterprise stuff:
http://www.google.com/enterprise/
Ahh the age old IT Department issue. How do I proactively manage and capture our information.
I'm still grappling with this. I've had some success in a previous company using TWiki to capture basic documentation. Its biggest drawback was a lack of document management. That said, the documentation I put in there is still being referred to and used. I think they were looking at moving to documentum (as a seperate project within the company) and were looking to see what wiki style functionality they could find.
I've recently looked at mediawiki, but keep being drawn back to TWiki. I just wish they'd get round to releasing a new production release of the app. The latest beta's are looking great.
As a seperate system, I setup a b2evolution (http://b2evolution.org/ site called maintlogs. I've setup categories corresponding to device names in the blogs so that we can enter comments against devices whenever we undertake work on them. I initially looked at pushing out an RSS Reader to each of the IT guys desktops, but then found an RSS2Email package which runs on a scheduled job every 15 minutes to email out new posts to the blog. Kind of kills the reason for RSS, but Email is part of everyones life already.
Where I work, I have set up a Wiki (MoinMoin on Python twisted webserver), and it works well. We even use it for storing files (spreadsheets, scripts etc.) by using the attachment feature. MoinMoin's search is slow, so you might need some other indexing solution. We use Microsoft Index server to index the files (our Windows file server had it installed, and it wasn't very hard to set up).
The new 2.1 release is pretty sweet. Has everything you can ask for from an open source CMS.
:)
There is a special product, Plone Help Center, that can help you organize things. Have multiple PHCs (they act as folders), and you can categorize things based on meta-subjects. You can even use it to index and search your doc/pdf/xls files.
Hope this helps
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
Disclaimer -- my company wrote this product -- http://www.productionmanuals.com/. We wrote it for making manufacturing documentation easier, but I've been using it to document the product itself. It's a lot easier to use than word or acrobat for actually getting things written down, and since it keeps everything in one place you never lose it. Is something like that useful for your situation?
We set up a departmental Gmail account. Then, if someone comes across something useful, they can send it to the Gmail account. We obviously don't keep sensitive information on there, but it is good for almost everything else. The nice thing about the Gmail account is that it is easily searched, people at any location can get to it, and the only effort required is actually adding the information to it. If someone is anal-retentive enough to want to organize it, he is free to use labels, but so far, the searching has been adequate for everyone.
I struggled for days and days and all I got was this lousy sig.
...I have been thinking about this alot where I work...or current knowledge managment solution...well in a word SUCKS! Whatever you do stay away from Peregrine(hp soon) Get.Answers....
I have done a basica architecting of a solution that I think would work excellently. Its all based off a Google Search appliance...dump the docs in a few directories tell the Mini google to go to town....
Now users can google for what they need!
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
I love the network indexing. I can pull up network resources faster the the networkers next door now ;)
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
In my development group, we store all our quick-reference material, equipment operation notes, etc. in a KB called LORE, available for about $100 at http://www.pineappletechnologies.com/products/lore /. It's written in PHP, and you get the source code. Very powerful. Our vendor-supplied PDF's, etc., go in a well-defined directory structure.
(1)ditch microsoft office & outlook
(2)make everything visible
(3)make everything shareable
(4)taxonomy is knowledge glue
I just did this for all new projects, the solution is Drupal. Every project and sizeable task gets a chunk of taxonomy then you can catch the conversations in blogs, forums, wherever. All new, popular and recommended stuff is shown on a personal front page modelled on the DC.GOV website. All of this is also RSSified so it can go anywhere and be seen on a cellphone. There's a lot of information but also space for showing feeds & inboxes.
Taxonomy takes a bit of work but tagging actually helps build and refine it. Over six months it will stabilize.
WebOffice All 'documents' should now be written online - either with Writely or the drupal bookmodule. They can be seen, co-edited and generally shared. All drupal mods are wikified. Any text that is proprietary or cannot be written online is a knowledge prison.
Old docs - Knowledge Tree'll hold the old ones
DK
The obvious commercial solutions are the IBM Workplace or Domino family of products (if you want multi-platform browser-based access), and Lotus Notes (if you're a Windows shop and like the rich client).
The main advantages over wikis are security (transparent encryption and strong authentication), replication (set up local servers at each site for speed, and have them replicate data), indexing of Office and other proprietary file formats, a more sophisticated user interface, commercial support, and ability to extend easily to include e-mail, instant messaging, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance documents, and so on.
The main disadvantages, of course, are price, and that you may not like the user interface--the more sophisticated a UI, the more there is to dislike. The trolls will be along in a minute to expand on that theme.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I must de-lurk for this topic.
/ 1974/04/10/31-restrict-pages-under-mediawiki is a good page on how to restrict certain pages in MediaWiki. There is only one level of restriction though - the page is either restricted, or it isn't. To my joy I also discovered that while restriced pages also get indexed for searching, they do not show up among the search results if the user is not on the restricted level himself.
My company is currently centralizing all of its IT functions from the 42 Europe-wide sites it has. Knowledge management is a nightmare, as the institutional knowledge is spread too thin among the old timers to make any impact for the new people. We have some processes documented, but by far not all of them. We decided we needed a written repository of knowledge, as we are growin at a rate where we can not afford to waste time.
We finally decided on MediaWiki, just like some of the others here have suggested, for pretty much the same reasons. It is just great for unstructured information, and the ability to categorize and very quickly link to other pages has turned out to be very useful. It is very quick to update - no need to muck around with HTML and uploading a page. Just hit Edit, change that IP from 223 to 23, click Save and you're set.
Converting existing Word documents to wiki format is essential for quickly populating the wiki with content. We have a lot of support documents with screenshots. I found out that the best way to do that is to save the Word file as HTML. It will export the images both as JPEGs and PNGs. The PNG is the image as it was imported into Word, at its native resolution, while the JPEG is a result of how it has been processed within Word itself (cropped / framed / recolored). I generally just grab the PNGs, unless the cropping was significant, as the JPEG resolution is fairly low. As for the text, I just grab the plain text from the document and mark it up with wikicode. Fairly painless.
Additionally, I also found a nice tool for converting Excel tables into wikicode, for all those worksheets with server IPs, domain functions and other stuff. Save your Excel as CSV then fire up the converter at http://area23.brightbyte.de/csv2wp.php. Just copy-paste (or upload), and presto! You have a nice wiki table. You can then mark it up with colors and other bling-bling if required. Again, I found the process to be relatively fast and painless.
Keeping with the wiki way, the majority of our pages have unrestricted access. Since I'm not a great believer in security through obscurity, we needed something to protect sensitive information - mostly passwords. The privileged few that need to know can get bumped to a higher security level and access these restricted pages.
http://conseil-recherche-innovation.net/index.php
By the way, I full agree with the parent - the wiki by itself is not enough, you do need a librarian / knowledge manager to categorize all the braindumps and also to educate people on its mere existence. I also found that you need to pour a certain amount of info into the wiki before it reaches critical mass and people start to really use it. You do need to work a lot on it, especially in the early stages, with importing content. We didn't bother with scope definitions and categories and stuff - since all of this is so easy to change once the data is up, we'll just build it as we go along.
In my experience software doesn't work. At least not in any standard "we're not hiring more people, find the time" IT shop I've worked at. What does seem to work is vacations. Always have a secondary for a given task. When the primary goes on vacation, it's a great time to transfer vital know-how. Further, during the layoff, plenty of the little tidbits surface that need to get transfered and can be after the primary returns.
But we use MS Sharepoint (SPS + WSS)
Once you get to know it and get a development team behind it to modify its oddities its stupidly powerfull and the integration with the group's office suite really helps streamline things.
Ignoring setup costs its actually one of the best solutions for knowledge management I think, this is of course after i spent 18 months evaluating the alternatives (including wiki's). Currently in the process of adding in company workflow with biztalk and infopath and its now becoming the be all and end all tool for document/knowledge and information management within the group
Why should I produce good documentation anyway? So it's easier for you to fire me? What's in it for me?
I document the bare minimum and keep the rest in my head. My crib notes are so cryptic they might as well be Swahili to anyone else.
Oh, but the boss is insisting I write some documentation. No problem.
Theoretically you could use the linked article to help you write good documentation, but I've never seen it happen.
If you really want to capture the state of your IT department, you need to lock everyone in a room with a gigantic whiteboard and start diagraming your systems. Get someone to take notes or digicam pictures or something. Encourage questions and heckling.
Edit those notes into something useable and let everyone criticize them. Once everyone is happy, do it again for the next system.
The above takes way too much time, so no-one ever has a complete picture of what/where/why/when.
The best tool in the world won't save you if your people aren't using it.
You could always shackle a leg to the desk.
As long as they don't wear prosthetics.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
xwiki = very cool and powerful- has db backend, attachments, versioning, scripting langauge, and security, RSS feeds, online diffs, one click rollbacks. webnotes = for those who cannot part with the postit paradigm - free form postits in a browser - kinda cool. tiddlywiki = for those who want a personal wiki that runs off your USB drive - really way of editing and storing data. When you leave a company you take your wiki knowledge with you. :)
http://www.xwiki.org/
http://www.tiddlywiki.com/
http://www.aypwip.org/webnote/
xwiki = very cool and powerful- has db backend, attachments, versioning, scripting langauge, and security, RSS feeds, online diffs, one click rollbacks.
:)
webnotes = for those who cannot part with the postit paradigm - free form postits in a browser - kinda cool.
tiddlywiki = for those who want a personal wiki that runs off your USB drive - really way of editing and storing data. When you leave a company you take your wiki knowledge with you.
http://www.xwiki.org/
http://www.tiddlywiki.com/
http://www.aypwip.org/webnote/
An IT department has a lot of different functions: leadership, project managers, developers, etc. in need of tracking lots of different pieces of information and knowledge artifacts (plans, documentation, code, etc.).
To find out what you need, analyse what is out there. How people/groups store information now. How is knowledge exchanged ? Where are the communication/documentation/knowledge transfer shortcomings ?
Try not to go down the path to create extensive, high maintenance directory structures. Use metadata to categorize any kind of document/page/etc. and use a dynamic taxonomy or search engine with metadata support to find the documents.
While a wiki is a great tool, it lacks the support for structured documentation. While document mgmt systems are great for structure, they lack the flexibility of wikis.
A lot of open source portal/cms tools include mixtures of these functionalities: drupal, tikiwiki, etc.. (my favorite: tikiwiki). For an example, please email me. I would recommend looking at those to implement the functionality that one needs. Be sure to gather the needs across the department, monitor changing needs, and provide adaption to those.
My humble $.02,
SL