Monday, May 12, 2008

Project Wiki or Project Blog?

I've seen a lot of technology development projects adopt wikis as a way of sharing information. Often, unless you appoint someone the job of keeping the information both up-to-date and organized, these often get out of hand pretty quickly. Without a common kind of organization to keep things in check, it gets difficult to find information, and without someone constantly reviewing the documentation for relevance, some information gets out of date quickly while others remain relevant.

I'm starting to wonder if projects should probably seek a platform that emphasizes a blog style rather than a wiki style. The blog entry metaphor is more suited to "writing information about a point in time." When you do a search for something in your project blog and find information from May 2006, you're much more likely to think to yourself, "Hey, I wonder if this is still relevant."

That's not to say that a Wiki isn't a good idea, just that wiki content should be saved for information that is both long-term relevant and worth keeping up-to-date, and then someone should, in fact, regularly review it for relevance and make any necessary updates.

In keeping with my agile mindset, this kind of regularly updated documentation should be kept to that information that is very valuable, so that you don't distract a team whose job is creating value through software and end up spending a lot of their time reviewing and updating documentation that isn't necessary.

1 comment:

Michael Prescott said...

Hmm, I think this post should have been a wiki entry instead.