Using Community Tools To Improve Team Work

Copyright © 2006 TietoEnator Corporation

Using Community Tools To Improve Team WorkMagnus Einarsson

Page 2Copyright © 2006 TietoEnator Corporation2006-09-06

Background

New team Distributed development Many team members lacked experience in the problem domain Implementation of system for a platform new to all team members Lots of competence build up Large amount of information collected Resources change during project Few experts in team


Needs

Effectively build up the competence in the team Collect information about platform/application etc Effective communication between team members

– Preferably including Real-time communication Multi party communication Presence information


The tools that helped us reach our goals

Internal instant messaging server based on Jabber/XMPP

Wiki system for information collection


What is a Wiki

A wiki is a collaborative web application which allows users to edit content

Uses simplified Wikimarkup instead of HTML

Anybody can edit thepages

Revision control

Picture from http://www.oddmuse.org


Enterprise Wiki vs. traditional project web sites

Traditional intranet website– Webmaster maintained

Where is the source document Who can update it

– Threshold to get content updated– Static– Often outdated information

Wiki– If you can access the information you have the tool needed to add

more information– Easy to publish information– Change tracking/audit trail– Integrated searching


Wiki uses in a project

Knowledgebase Sharing a project notebook Tracking

– Sprint backlog– Features– Milestones/Sprints

Meeting minutes Sharing collected documentation Listing customer contact Keeping track of test results


Wiki Experiences

Start easy– Use simple tools– Prioritize information contribution before appearance and fancy

features Encourage contribution

– When you help someone, make them document the problem and the solution in the wiki

After a while you can answer most questions with – “It´s in the Wiki!”


Features needed to make a Wiki suitable for enterprise usage

Access control Partitioning of information Good search Change tracking/traceability Attachments

Nice to have– Support for archiving mail– Integration with IM system– Headline news

Recent changes Announcements


Instant Messaging – How it started

Individual team members used private IM accounts (ICQ, AIM, MSN)– Not acceptable - we need to keep the information inside company

network Deployed IRC server

– Successfully used to create channels for small groups working on specific problem

– But people still relied on public systems for one-one communications and presence

We needed our own IM system


IM Solution

We deployed an internal IM system based on Jabber/XMPP– Open standard for IM systems– Several server and client implementations available– Supports all important IM services

Presence One-one communication Multi user communication File transfers Encryption Servers can be connected using encrypted channels


Leverage the IM infrastructure

Leverage the presence information– Assign trouble reports to present team members– No need to run/call around to find out who is available

The IM system can also extended by using agents/bots– Notify team about events

Test results System outages

– Issue handling system knows who is present– Monitoring


Experiences

The IM system is a very good complement to using e-mail and phone.– Pace of a phone conversation– Capable of transporting error logs and screen captures that is

often associated with discussions in a test or development project.

IM system very good for– Cooperation to solve problems– Finding someone available to help you

Drawbacks– Lots of good information might be lost

=> Turn on logging in clients


Resources

Wiki systems– Oddmuse http://www.oddmuse.org– Mediawiki http://www.mediawiki.org– Confluence http://www.atlassian.com/confluence– TWiki http://www.twiki.org

Jabber/XMPP information– Everything about Jabber/XMPP http://www.jabber.org– Wildfire server and Spark client http://www.jivesoftware.org– Original Jabber implementation http://jabberd.org/

Documents

Using Community Tools To Improve Team Work