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Collaboration through Wikis

An interesting article here in the latest issue of LLRX in it the author (Heather Colman) describes how her firm Hicks Morley chose Domino Wiki as solution for sharing knowledge.

This is an interesting article in that it describes the problems fee-earners within her firm faced and why Wikis were identified as the solution. From the article...

"...lawyers were extremely reliant on email to find information that resided in many different places...Searching for a particular piece of information was cumbersome and information was buried in the various repositories"

"Wikis were an ideal solution because they are quick and easy to set up, require very little IT support and could serve as central repositories. They offer search capability, email, RSS notifications for the tech savvy lawyer and the ability to create a taxonomy of subject tags to classify information"

What's also great about the article is that they have demonstrated how successful the Wikis have been with some quantiative data.

"Since our successful launch, 768 pages, 384 links and 530 internal shortcuts have been added by individual users. The most surprising statistic is that 1445 documents have been as attachments"

Heather also includes some recommendations for a successful Wiki implemention:

• "Start with a small project or group that is already collaborative and well organized helping to ensure a win.
• Recruit high level executive or partner champions to share success stories.
• Select a platform that is easy to use without too many bells and whistles.
• Do not force participation.
• Remove barriers and impediments by keeping the wiki open for editing and transparent.
• Create a process for updating that transfers responsibility to each practice group or department."

Full post as published by LI Issues on February 12, 2009 (boomark / email).