Information Technology Reference
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larger trends
Thus, people expect every search tool to work as
well as Google and every text editor to work as
well as Microsoft Word or Open Office, which
presents daunting challenges for other vendors
and products.
A third and final set of challenges involve larger
trends that affect collaboration and KM.
The rapid pace of change in information
technology presents both benefits and challenges.
Some of today's technical limitations (such
as processing speed, disk space, and network
bandwidth) may disappear within a few years.
At the same time, there will be new challenges
and limitations as systems strive to incorporate
more and larger data objects, including images,
audio, and video. It is difficult to predict what
new applications and opportunities will appear,
even in the next few years, which makes it dif-
ficult to design current platforms and systems to
address future needs. For example, the Semantic
Web (Antoniou & van Harmelen, 2004; Berners-
Lee, Fensel, Hendler, Lieberman, & Wahlster,
2005) will annotate content using standardized
taxonomies to make it easier for computers to
perform search and analysis tasks currently done
by humans. Some experimental wikis and related
tools incorporate semantic concepts (e.g. Cayzer,
2004; Schaffert, 2006).
There are also challenges from the increas-
ing role of collaboration (particularly virtual
collaboration) in peoples' lives. As described
above, KM systems have evolved from archival
databases designed to support executive decision
making to systems which support continual col-
laboration across and between organizations. It
is increasingly common to work in virtual teams
that span locations, organization, time zones, and
national boundaries (e.g. Duarte & Snyder, 2000;
Pinsonneault & Caya, 2005; Powell, Piccoli, &
Ives, 2004). People are increasingly comfortable
socializing, networking, and collaborating with
people they have never met face to face. As a
result, tools for collaboration and KM are used
by a wider variety of people for a wider variety
of tasks. Popular conceptions of how systems
should work and what they should be able to do
are increasingly driven by a few major providers.
best PrACtiCes
The following sections identify and discuss best
practices for initiating and sustaining wiki-based
systems for collaboration and KM, organized into
three groups: organizational factors, project fac-
tors, and tool and platform factors.
organizational Factors
Assess Organizational Culture
Organizational culture has a strong impact on
KM projects, and particularly on wiki-based
projects that depend on a variety of people con-
tributing, editing, and maintaining. DeMarco and
Lister (1999, p. 4) remind software developers
that “the major problems of our work are not so
much
technological
as
sociological
in nature”
(original emphasis). Thus, organizations should
address cultural issues before focusing on techni-
cal details, particularly for a wiki, which “cannot
function without a community and should not
be considered separately from it” (Blake, 2006).
For KM systems to be effective, the organiza-
tional culture must value sharing over hording;
this can be a challenge when the organization is
facing rapid change, when employees compete
with each other, or when they worry about job
security. People must believe that they (as well as
others) will benefit from contributing knowledge,
and that their contributions will not be exploited,
used against them, or attacked unfairly (Figallo &
Rhine, 2002, p. 114). It is difficult for other factors
to overcome cultural problems; “if the process of
sharing and transfer is not inherently rewarding,
celebrated, and supported by the culture, then
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