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.
Slashdot Mirror
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