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1 Copyright Lisa Spencer and Gayle Burns, This work is the intellectual property of the authors. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced d materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the authors. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the authors.

2 Using a Wiki as a Project Management Tool Lisa Spencer, Director, Support Services Gayle Burns, Manager, Academic Technologies Educause Western Regional Conference April 1, 2008 San Francisco, CA

3 Where s that information... Wasitinan in an.....?

4 No formal process Perhaps a phone call?

5 Project info was scattered Did I hear it in a meeting?

6 Impermanent info abounded I think it s on the whiteboard...

7 There had to be a better way! photo KE TA

8 Today s presentation will cover: Brief history on project management at Occidental Show examples from our first project management software tool Discuss why we switched to using the wiki Show examples from the wiki Lessons Learned

9 The Beginnings of Project Management at Oxy Began using Basecamp as our project management tool in September, 2006 Proved useful for collecting information in one place Very structured environment Difficult to get everyone to start using Basecamp

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12 Introducing Oxypedia, our wiki Introduced in October, 2006 Set up knowledge bases for documenting departmental processes and procedures Staff easily adapted to using the wiki for this purpose Documentation became a fairly regular occurrence

13 Nine Months later

14 Documentation Consternation: Where should I put this information? Where did I put that information? Where do I find the information I need?

15 Two tools were too many Added confusion Wasted time High frustration level Some staff didn t want to use both tools we needed to SIMPLIFY

16 Introducing Oxypedia as a PM Tool Not much pre-planning planning Developed Project Plan page templates Allowed organization strategies t to develop as people became more comfortable

17 Pros Flexible structure tailor it to meet your particular needs for the project Reduced meeting time Specific pages or entire spaces can be watched updates via Easy to share the space or specific pages with colleagues in other departments Easy to upload documents No question about where to put information or where to find information Our staff took to the wiki easily (people actually USED it)

18 New Challenges Wiki doesn t pull the milestones or updates of all current projects into one calendar Setting no rules for the organization of project spaces resulted in some disorganization Needed to begin tagging consistently so items could be searched on

19 Luminis Portal Project y p y Pros: Documentation in central location Shared easily with folks across campus Cons: Information is separated into logical pages, but pages are not organized within the space

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25 Ingeniux CMS Migration y p y Pros: Documentation about this phase of the project in a central location Captured all of the exchanges between the IT staff, student staff, and temp staff Cons: Only useful to a few inside people Didn t capture all of the project data (previous phases captured in other places)

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28 Timelogs Simple tables Viewing can be restricted to the individual and his/her project manager if desired We found it particularly useful to track hours worked by student workers and temporary contractors

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32 Iterations of the LMS Project LMS Committee: Jan 2007 Jan 2008 Project predated me: June 2007 Info collected: Peoples hard drives: Powerpoints, meeting notes, memos Phone calls Face-to-face info gathering techniques

33 LMS Project Part 1 y p y Pros: Documentation in central location Think through planning process Cons: Not comfortable sharing it outside of ITS Only useful to a few inside people

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36 LMS Project Part 2 Pros: Mirrors the hard copy recommendation Easy access (links) to supporting documents Doesn t spam servers Cons: Some people still unfamiliar with Oxypedia

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38 LMS Project Part 3 me Pros Continued the thinking process Cons Needed more structure to be useful

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40 One year in We re the campus technology champions, but still find ourselves challenged by adapting to a new tool. Confusion about how to organize information.... At a minimum, information is more easily captured, searchable, and shared then it was before Oxypedia.

41 Factors in success? A strong desire to collaborate Peer pressure, in the form of gentle reminders from Oxypedia champions Critical information lives there! Including restaurant reviews and holiday party planning

42 Lessons learned? Assign a project manager/owner Provide basic project formats for folks to choose from if they like Always front load the process with the project overview template t Encourage the use of labels/tags Consider the use of viewing restrictions Encourage subscribes

43 Take aways If you re considering it try it! Allows people to think in whatever ways they are comfortable Be patient with yourself and with others there is a technical learning curve and a process learning curve (one size doesn t fit all)

44 Thank you! Questions? Suggestions? Examples?