Results

Businesses have increasingly turned to online training methods in recent years, using technology as a way to better serve the needs of their employees’ professional development. This is especially true for those employees who need help with “hard skills,” such as computer training, operating machinery, or safety standards. Now, HR departments are starting to look to e-learning as a means of teaching “soft skills” or “people skills,” like communication, conflict resolution, management techniques, teamwork, and foreign language. This trend is still in its infancy, and some business are scratching their heads and asking, “Can you really learn people skills online?”

Employers are turning to e-learning to ensure that younger workers are developing the soft skills they need as they take over the work force. Baby boomers are slated to retire soon, and companies are worried that their experience and knowledge will go with them. Younger workers are accustomed to using computers, cell phones, and social networking websites in their everyday activities, and e-learning advocates hope that these two groups can be linked through online mentoring and training programs.

U.S. Bancorp has begun using a software package called Open Mentoring which connects workers across the organization for personalized training and mentoring services. Open Mentoring matches up employees based on demographic and competency information, and helps them connect through phone calls, online chats, and forums. The strategy may help preserve some of the organizational knowledge and memory that would otherwise be lost when experienced employees retire.

Employers are also using e-learning technologies to improve the language skills of their increasingly diverse workforces. Many companies who use an outsourcing employment model or who operate overseas are finding it increasingly important to provide language training to employees at locations all over the world. E-learning tools can help make that experience uniform and ensure the quality of teaching is the same across the company. One leader in this market is GlobalEnglish, which boasts clients such as Reuters, Mitsubishi, Nestle, General Motors, Canon, and Hilton International. They offer customized programs which will allow for specific problems or challenges to be addressed depending on the native language of the employee.

Online training has also come in handy for companies who need to give seminars on ethics or sexual harassment laws. During my tenure at a major publishing company with thousands of employees worldwide, we were required to participate in a web-based sexual harassment course. The 60-minute interactive class included a pretest, videos of real-life scenarios, test questions, and follow-up material that could be printed. Rather than attending a crowded meeting with a frustrated HR rep trying to shout over the chatter of bored employees, we were able to complete the training on our own schedule without the distractions of our immature coworkers.

So how do we know if online training is appropriate or effective for soft skills development? Many organizations are attempting to answer the same question. A number of online training models include follow-up meetings and sessions to allow trainees to interact and test their knowledge. This means that local HR reps have a chance to evaluate the effectiveness of the training, if only on an informal level. Metrics for soft skills learning are hard to define, but many programs use a survey/user satisfaction model to collect data and measure success. However, with the incorporation of more and more Web 2.0 tools into e-learning programs, people skills can indeed be exercised online. Between blogs, WIKI, social networking/bookmarking, and video sharing, employees really are able to communicate and learn in a group setting from the comfort of their cubes.

Back in August 2007, job board giant Monster.com was hit by a major security breach. Hackers used a legitimate employer account and password to steal names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses from 1.3 million job seekers who used the site. The information was later used to send out “phishing” emails, which used Monster’s brand to gather financial information from victims. Information was stolen not only from Monster, but also from those of USAJobs, a federal employment service which used Monster’s databases. This brought to light the problem of security for online recruiters and job hunters alike, and companies like Monster are struggling to keep up with the demand for a more secure method of storing user information.

Online recruiting is becoming more and more popular, with large companies paying a premium for job postings and access to resumes from sites like Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com. Companies are estimated to have spent nearly $6 billion on online job postings last year, and in 2005, approximately 51% of new hires were found online. That number is expected to grow. With the continued expansion of online recruiting efforts, employers and job seekers are looking for some assurances that security will improve.

Monster.com responded to the hack (albeit slowly) by issuing a letter to users explaining their plans for beefing up security. “Monster has formed a Security Task Force made up of senior management from the Monster organization. The task force is committed to develop infrastructure advances that will further enhance the security of our customers and services.” These infrastructure advances could include any number of efforts, including monitoring activity on their website in real time to “catch” any thieves in the act.

It seems this may not be enough for job seekers, who have lost their trust in online job boards. In a recent interview with HR Magazine, a recruiting firm exec says, “They’re no longer putting their information out there, so [it’s] a waste of time.” Until companies like Monster and Careerbuilder get serious about limiting who can access user information, recruiters and job hunters alike are looking towards alternative models for connecting job hunters with relevant postings.

One promising company is Job Central National Labor Exchange, which was created by a consortium of employers called DirectEmployers. DirectEmployers aims “to improve labor market efficiency through the sharing of best practices, research, and the development of new technology.” Companies using Job Central pay a flat fee of $15,000 annually for job postings, and they carefully screen to make sure that all the employers and opportunities are legitimate. The site uses no advertising, as ads can lead users to dowloading spyware or other malicious software. Best of all, Job Central uses a Google application called Base which allows listings to be gathered from employers sites and linked through jobcentral.com. This means that job hunters are sent directly to the employer to apply for the job, and no personal information is stored on Job Central’s servers.

Another solution to this security problem is being pioneered by Jobs2Web, which is an optimization strategy for companies who want their job listings to show up at the top of search engine results. They want to put the traditional job board out of business by making a company’s recruitment website more visible to the average job seeker. As their website explains, “Our career site optimization solution will optimize your open jobs and make sure they can be found on major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN as well as free job posting locations.”

As Monster’s apology letter points out, “Every Internet site in the world is facing the growing issue of fraudulent usage of information,” and it seems that hackers have so far had an easy time targeting job boards. Their relative lack of security and their vast amounts of user information make them a juicy target indeed. More companies will likely suffer the fate of Monster, and more job seekers will likely reach out to alternative job boards like Job Central. Until job boards get serious about security, beware of unsolicited emails from your favorite site asking for your bank account information.

While many businesses understand the benefits of some kind of service-level agreement (SLA) with their IT providers, they often neglect to put serious time or thought into drafting one that maximizes the contract. A good SLA should not only lay out customer expectations and terms of service, but it should also provide metrics for measuring performance and provide incentives for a job well-done. Creating a customized SLA could save your business time, money, and provide a better user experience.

Good SLAs address a few key questions:

• What will the provider promise to do, and how will they do it?
• How will their performance be measured?
• How will the SLA adapt to changes?
• What will serve as incentives or penalties?

In answering these questions, businesses can tailor their SLAs directly to the needs of their organization. Be sure your expectations are realistic, comprehensive, and specific. It’s important to have an accurate idea of what is possible and what is impossible. Think of the SLA as an insurance policy. It’s meant to ensure you stay up and running in case of a major disaster, but it’s also meant to help your IT provider perform well in case of a serious meltdown. Like any good contract, an SLA is two-way legal protection, and negotiating the terms up front can ensure that expectations on both sides are reasonable. This is the major reason to establish performance metrics. Do you need faster response times? Do you need to meet a monthly volume goal? Do you need to reduce the total amount of time employees spend on certain tasks? By laying out specific goals and metrics from the start, your IT provider is in a better position to meet your needs.

So why not draw up an air-tight, comprehensive service-level agreement? The answer is simple: you will pay more for services that you might not need. Just as you wouldn’t need a minivan for your solo commute to work, you may not need some of the services your IT provider is trying to throw into your SLA. One easy way to determine exactly what you need to include is to conduct a survey of users from various backgrounds and departments. Find out what really matters to the end user, and you can potentially save a good deal of money by customizing your IT coverage.

One of the most interesting new trends in IT service is the negotiation of in-house service-level agreements. Some companies are starting to write up SLAs with their internal IT groups, complete with metrics, incentives, and penalties. While some might scoff at this idea, suggesting that internal contracts aren’t effective, others have embraced the trend as a way to track cooperation and success between departments. Even though you cannot sue your own IT department for breach of contract, you can use a combination of metrics and incentives to improve their performance. Once compensation is tied to success, everyone will be on board with an internal SLA.

In the end, as with any product or service, the most important measure of success is the overall user experience. Be ready to reevaluate your measurement techniques and criteria if you find a disconnect between the user experience and the metrics you defined in the SLA. If your customers (be they in-house employees or outside clients) see an improvement, then your efforts have been successful. Also, it’s advisable to put a process in place which will enforce the measurements in real time and help ensure that the SLA is being met. This can be done by using tools from companies like Gomez or building your own measurement. Regardless of how you choose to enforce the measurement, creating, communcating and sticking to a good SLA is a win-win for everyone involved - especially the end users.

Three letter acronyms. The technology industry would fall apart if we didn’t have them. “ROI” is a classic that has been around for quite awhile, although it has reached a bigger audience in recent years. For those who avoid buzzwords, it stands for “Return on Investment.” While we can acknowledge that ROI is the essence of business economics (money earned - money spent = profits), it should never take the place of providing a good customer experience.

The concept of ROI, while easy to quantify in a retail establishment or a traditional manufacturer, is more elusive in the IT industry. How to you put a price on saved time or increased satisfaction? For this reason, IT companies are taking the lead in providing a different kind of return on investment, that of great user experience. In the growing world of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), companies are investing in software and web-based applications to facilitate customer service. A recent article in Baseline magazine gives the example of British telecom company BT used Citrix Online’s Go-To-Assist improved their customer satisfaction scores by 97 percent.

BT had a problem with the way their help desk services were delivered to clients. While the issues were eventually resolved, customers disliked being passed from person to person, and each technician was spending too long with each caller. With the implementation of Go-To-Assist, technicians had remote access to clients no matter what their location or connection. Multiple technicians could work on the problem simultaneously, and the resolution was minimally invasive to the caller. Customer satisfaction went from 20 percent to 97 percent, and it’s hard to argue with the ROI of this type of marked improvement.

Another company which is focusing on CRM as a business strategy is Salesforce.com, which has made waves in the IT industry. Salesforce uses a web-based model for delivery, and it offers a “platform as a service” package through Force.com. Clients can customize the platform to meet specific needs, and they can choose to build or buy an application. Salesforce is self-described as “ROI for IT”, and their website argues that traditional CRM software is an unacceptable risk for businesses: “CRM should solve your business problems, not create more headaches.” The message seems to be getting through, and they’ve seen astronomical growth since the company was founded in 1999. They’ve now landed major clients such as IBM, Expedia, Dow Jones Newswire, Microsoft, and Kaiser Permanente.

Both Citrix Online and Salesforce.com are representative of this new trend in ROI. Your customer satisfaction is a factor of business success, and you can make your customer service efforts pay for themselves. While these two players focus on web and software applications, this concept could be applied to many different aspects of business, including product development, marketing, and manufacturing. Instead of viewing all business activities through the cost vs. profit lens, successful businesses have started looking at processes throughout their workflow as a means by which to improve customer satisfaction and user experience. A better manufacturing process means faster delivery of products, a more thorough market research strategy means better-directed advertising, and a fully-vetted design means a slick, intuitive interface for customers.

The maxim, “You get what you pay for” has always been true for customers, but it’s now starting to impact businesses as well. An investment in user experience is an investment which can pay for itself. That is the ultimate ROI, not just another buzzword. With IT projects failing roughly 75% of the time, it is important to set solid goals to work towards a beneficial ROI while mapping metrics to judge your success. If you ignore this important step, you will be “SOL”.

Many companies struggle with their product development process. Some are constantly pressed for time and behind schedule, trying to balance quality content with tight budgets, and some have trouble keeping up with the desires of their users. One thing almost all companies have in common is the drive to innovate, but the inability to do so consistently. Not every product can be a breakthrough, and often new releases tend to be upgrades to old products instead of radical new products. One way to combat this stagnation is to implement the “lead user” process, where companies employ expert customers to search for breakthrough ideas.

Lead users are more than just early adopters, like those poor folks who bought the iPhone for $600. They are consumers who take existing products and adapt them to suit their own needs. A lead user is someone who cannot be satisfied by existing technology because it does not meet their unique high-level needs. For example, a NASCAR driver like Jeff Gordon might make tweaks and adjustments to his family car, while an expert jeweler may add a special clamp or built-in tool to a standard workbench. Incorporating lead users into your product planning and development cycles allows you to create a product that directly meets the needs and fulfills the desires of your most demanding users.

Several organizations have adopted the lead user process to give their products the best chance at innovation. Evolv, a company that makes rock climbing shoes, brought one of the best-known athletes into their lab to design a shoe from start to finish is one example. Evolv sponsors Chris Sharma, arguably the world’s best rock climber, and they invited him to participate in the creative product development process. Everyone benefits in this situation: Evolv gets an innovative product, customers gain access to a shoe designed by Chris Sharma, and Sharma gets a shoe he designed for his specific needs.

Another example of the lead user process is the growing world of open source software. Open source software packages make the source code available to the public so that creative programmers and developers can write ad-on programs and accessories for the product line. Mozilla is a company that has taken full advantage of this trend, and lead users have taken the source material to new heights with widgets and plug-ins that increase the functionality of their products. Facebook is another innovator in the field of open source software, and their site hosts thousands of applications written by third-party lead users for the benefit of average users.

Using outside experts is a great way to keep the product development process on the cutting edge. Organizations often doubt the willingness of lead users to contribute to product cycles, but most are enthusiastic about sharing their expertise and ideas. It benefits them just as much as it does the average consumer. Talent is talent, no matter what the source. It’s never too early to incorporate the lead user process into your product development group, and this technique, in conjunction with your existing usability techniques, can help you determine whether a new idea is viable, how you should approach your research, and what new users your ideas might be able to reach.

A few weeks ago, Facebook begun a revolutionary advertising system called Beacon, which would collect data about user’s purchases on outside websites and add them to their Facebook profiles, through the news feed/mini feed functions. The original goal for Beacon was, “to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends”
(Facebook blog). The service would tell your friends what movie tickets you purchased on Fandango.com, for example, or which games you added to your queue on Gamefly. The idea struck some users, though, as a distinct invasion of privacy, and for others Beacon was literally the Grinch who stole Christmas. Reportedly, one man’s wife learned of the diamond ring he’d bought her for the holiday from his Facebook mini-feed.

Beacon was meant to be a key part of Facebook’s social advertising strategy, where social networking is a springboard for word-of-mouth advertising. Unfortunately, Beacon did not receive the accolades they expected. Instead, MoveOn.org, a civic action advocacy organization, became involved and accused Facebook of violating user privacy. Users formed a group on Facebook itself called “Petition: Facebook, stop invading my privacy!”, which now has more than 75,000 members. It wouldn’t be surprising if litigators get involved at some point (emotional distress over spoiled gift surprises is a far more valid claim than many of the lawsuits our courts are forced to hear).

All this hoopla and backlash has forced Facebook to apologize and make amends by giving users the option of turning off Beacon. Here’s how to opt-out:

• Click the “Privacy” tab in the upper right hand corner on your Facebook page.
• Select “Edit Setting” under External Websites
• Check the box that says “Don’t allow any websites to send stories to my profile”.

While allowing users to turn off Beacon is a step in the right direction, some users are still critical of Facebook, with one blogger noting that the text “is a very light gray…on a white background. Specifically designed to blend in with the background, once again making it all that more difficult to get out of the damn thing.” For those who choose to opt-in, Facebook added pop-up windows to the system that force users to click “OK” before any action at a third-party website is posted to their profiles/mini-feeds. This allows users to cherry pick which actions they want friends to see and which actions they want to keep private.

Other industry watchdogs claim that turning off Beacon does not mean that Facebook is not still collecting data about your activities from outside websites; it just means that your friends don’t see that data in their news feeds. Those claims are expressly denied by Facebook: “If you select that you don’t want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won’t store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook” (Facebook blog). Those partners, by the way, are mostly keeping mum about the backlash. It’s also surprisingly difficult to find a complete list of which websites are participating, though this blog published a partial list.

It seems that social advertising is not what the public wants, even though it would be enormously beneficial to the advertisers who get a ready-made captive audience. This hiccough is not likely to be the death of systems like Beacon, though. The idea is too juicy to let it die, though I guarantee that similar initiatives will be far less transparent in the future. While “they” (in the Big Brother sense of the word) may have lost this round, our actions on the web will continue to be tracked, shared, and stored. The only question is, will other companies have the guts to admit privacy violations like Facebook did, or will they simply make their efforts invisible to users?

Once upon a time, little more than a decade ago, if you wanted to rent a movie you had to physically visit a video store. You had to drive your gas-guzzling vehicle through rain and snow, busy streets, and crowded parking lots. When you actually arrived at the store, you encountered less-than-enthusiastic employees, little selection, and draconian late fees. You would pay a steep price per movie, and you would have to bring it back again the next day to avoid more fees. If you wanted a specific film, you probably should have called ahead to see if it was available at your local store, because otherwise you’ll end up watching whichever new release is still on the shelf.

Nowadays, the movie fan has many more options that do not involve the negative experiences described above. More and more people are signing up for online rental services like Netflix, which revolutionized the way we watch movies when they begun service in 1999. They are drawn to the convenience, selection, and service that a traditional brick-and-mortar store cannot offer. Netflix spokesperson Steve Swasey points out, “You can rent from wherever you want, whether you’re at home, at work, or at Starbucks.” Best of all, compared with the average video store’s selection of 3,000 to 5,000 titles, Netflix now offers over 90,000 films of every possible genre.

The subscription service works on a very simple model. Members sign up for one of nine different plans, each offering a different number of movies at a time/per month, and each at a different price point. They can then search Netflix’s catalog of films and add them to a personal “queue”. Films will be shipped based on their order in your queue, and you can reorganize the order at any time. Your DVDs arrive in those tell-tale red envelopes which are designed to be your return envelope as well. The business model is smart, efficient, and it filled a real need in the marketplace. In fact, Netflix finds themselves with with 70% of the online movie rental market, with approximately 7 million subscribers. They are still growing rapidly, and they are poised to be very competitive in the $8 billion movie rental industry.

Obviously, as the largest of the traditional video chains, Blockbuster had to step up to the plate. They announced a service to rival Netflix called Total Access, which allowed customers to receive DVDs in the mail and exchange them in the store, all for lower prices. The Total Access service was successful in the short term, and it caused Netflix to drop their prices and add more DVDs to their catalog, but it wasn’t as competitive as they had hoped. It seems that people don’t want to go to the video store, even if it means getting more movies at once, and Netflix’s members seem to be abnormally loyal. This is bad news for Blockbuster, who’s third-quarter results are looking dismal. They have been forced to close hundreds of stores in the past year and cut many jobs to keep their heads above water.

As CNET’s News blog points out, “Blockbuster has been a victim on an online company finding new and inventive ways of bringing a product to a customer.” Why has Netflix been so successful? Why are their customers so loyal? Swasey attributes it to Netflix’s commitment to improving the customer experience: “We continued to invest in content by adding Blu-ray and HD DVD options and improving our user-friendly website. We added price plans so there would be something for everybody.” Indeed, the focus on website customer experience has paid off, as Netflix has been named the #1 rated website for customer satisfaction for five consecutive periods as a result of independent surveys conducted by ForeSee Results.

Netflix cares enough about user experience to offer a $1 million prize to any programmer who can improve their movie recommendation application by 10%. The system allows members to rate movies they’ve seen, then recommends other movies of similar genres, themes, and styles. So far, one team has been awarded a progress prize of $50,000 for their efforts, but the big money is still on the table. Other website improvements are also a priority, with the newly added “drag and drop” queue and the “watch instantly” function which allows users to see films directly in their browsers. In addition to improving the online experience, Netflix recently moved all their customer service to a call center in Oregon, so users can actually talk to a real person if they have a problem with service.

More and more traditional businesses are seeing market share slip away to e-businesses, and their efforts to hold onto customers are not terribly successful. Like Blockbuster, many of these brick-and-mortars compete only with prices without regard to the level of service that consumers want. They undercut not only their online rivals, but also themselves, and their services are not financially sustainable. The best way to compete would be to take an honest look at the user experience, which is something most brick-and-mortars never do. E-businesses and traditional businesses alike could look to market leaders like Netflix for solutions to their customer service shortcomings. In the meantime, I think I’ll take a look at what films await me in my Netflix queue.

A recent survey appearing in Health Affairs: The Policy Journal of the Health Sphere, shows that Americans find little satisfaction in the current health care system. The study focused on seven developed countries: Australia, Canada, Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United States. In almost all categories, U.S. patients ranked themselves dead last. Americans have the lowest life expectancy, the highest percent of GDP spent on health care, and the highest infant mortality rate of the nations polled.

A whopping 32% of patients have experienced medical mistakes, where as only 16% of Dutch patients said the same. This could be a result of doctors’ complaints about not having access to medical records at the time of service. Only 49% of Americans are able to get an appointment with their physician when they’re ill, whereas 75% of New Zealanders are able to see their doctors when it counts most. Even more revealing, 34% of U.S. patients surveyed say that the health care system needs to be entirely rebuilt.

What can health care providers, including physicians, hospitals, government programs, and insurance companies do to combat this high level of dissatisfaction? Is there something short of a complete overhaul that will improve the health care experience of the average American? Perhaps providers can take a page out of the book of private business, where the ultimate goal is always improving the customer experience. In the few months, Talkibie has reported on some of the high tech solutions that many providers are using to give their patients the best possible care. These new services and technologies could solve some of the user frustrations with our current health care system.

As reported earlier this fall, a Canadian company called Myca has been giving patients access to their doctors through cell phone video conferencing. Canada ranked the lowest of all seven countries when it came to same or next-day appointments with doctors, with the U.S. a close second. The service allows subscribers and doctors to communicate visually through their phones, and conversations can be logged and incorporated into existing medical records. Prescriptions can even be assigned by email. This could be a major help to physicians who suffer from a constant backlog of appointments, and for patients with minor ailments who need medication but do not necessarily need to be seen face-to-face. Providers and patients currently using the service have seized a golden opportunity to streamline the antiquated protocol of our current health care system.

Patients may also turn to alternative online options to increase their satisfaction with the health care system. Microsoft is courting the disgruntled patient with its new HealthVault service, which debuted in October. The idea is that medical records can be stored online and shared with any health care providers who use the service, regardless of whether or not they’re your primary doctor, a specialist, or a surgeon. It’s easy to see how a service of this kind would reduce the rate of medical mistakes due to a lack of access to medical records. And Microsoft is not the only high tech company to offer this service. Google unveiled vague plans to host online medical records, which it says was inspired by the destruction of thousands of patient records during Hurricane Katrina.

The U.S. health care system most definitely needs some changes, and borrowing a few tricks from the internet technology world could potentially solve common problems that affect the patient experience. Innovators in both fields could work together to identify and address the concerns of patients, and by using a problem-solving process that focuses on the needs of the end-user, we just might avoid a total overhaul.

Web 2.0 technologies are often finding a place in the business world, and wiki is the latest tool that’s causing a sensation and pleasing companies to no end. Wikis can adapt to the requirements of many organizations and give teams the ability to share knowledge in a collaborative manner. However, as any IT department knows, you just might have a riot on your hands if a new technology is not implemented in the right manner. Organizations, no matter how innovative and creative, are slow to adapt to changes in process and reluctant to learn new skills. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to combat this attitude and make an enterprise wiki successful.

A wiki, as defined by the most successful of them all (Wikipedia), is “a type of computer software that allows users to easily create, edit and link web pages.” It is essentially an online database in the form of web pages that can be explored, edited, and shared by a number of people. Wikipedia, for better or worse, is increasingly the first source we turn to for knowledge of any sort, be it the birth date of a celebrity or an explanation of a Walt Whitman poem. Users of the site can write content and add details to pages within the database to increase the usefulness of the articles. The same principle is beginning to be adopted by companies looking to simplify their means of information-sharing within their intranet. Users could turn to an internal wiki to learn how to upgrade their software, access information about past projects, find human resources policies and forms, or suggest changes to procedures that will benefit multiple units within the enterprise.

Many well-known organizations have turned to wiki for information sharing. Discovery Communications, which is the parent company for Discovery Channel and its affiliates, created a wiki where viewers could provide feedback on programs, discuss shows with other viewers, upload videos, and even recommend new content to producers and executives. Boston College’s Gerald School of Information Management has also created a wiki for classes where students post ideas, essays, and suggest exam questions. Students have the opportunity to collaborate and learn from their peers in a manner which does not increase the workload for professors.

There are two major types of wikis that can be applied in a business setting, depending on an organization’s needs: suites generally include enterprise bookmarking, blogging, and tagging programs, while stand-alone wikis are stripped down to provide basic service. The need for suites depend on the type, size, and resources of the organization. The end-user or audience for the wiki must be the determining factor when you make a decision. Is this a group that is familiar with Web 2.0 technologies, or will the wiki be their first experience of this type? What are likely to be their goals in creating a wiki? If your audience is active, eager, and motivated, you’ll have an easier time implementing a wiki, and potentially an entire suite Web 2.0 tools. Regardless of what type of software is chosen, it’s very important that organizations keep the implementation simple, organic, and rewarding to contributors.

While it’s easy for a college professor to provide incentives to participate in a wiki (class credit could depend on the number and quality of posts), there are still ways to encourage participation within an enterprise. First, think about a tiered release, with high-level users such as IT professionals and managers acting as the “front line”. These users can get the ball rolling and supply the wiki with a solid foundation of information, forms, and documentation that other users will come to appreciate. Once a foundation is in place, other users can be incorporated into the wiki and they should be encouraged to modify and add to existing pages. Next, participation in the wiki could be added as a regular task to employee schedules or as a part of a performance evaluation. Negative consequences are always less effective than positive reinforcement.

Some popular wiki packages include BEA Systems’ AquaLogic, and Microsoft’s SharePoint, both of which fall into the “suite” category, and include other Enterprise 2.0 services. Stand-alone programs include Mediawiki (the software behind Wikipedia), Tikiwiki (which is open source for customization), and Dokuwiki. All have different features, strengths, and capabilities and your best choice depends on the needs of your organization. The benefits of using this type of collaborative technology are many, and more and more creative companies are turning to wikis as an easy and effective way to keep teams up-to-date on in-house knowledge. This is especially useful in high turnover jobs like customer service and support personnel. A wiki can capture the accumulated knowledge of workers and make it easily accessible to new employees. Reps might use the wiki to log particularly successful or challenging support calls, and the company can use this data to train new employees and improve their services. While projects (and even team members) come and go, wikis help prevent knowledge and experience from going with them. A good wiki can act as a giant brain for your organization, helping you learn from the mistakes of the past and allowing every team member to contribute to the successes of the future.

Many software and application developers are using a process called “Agile development” or “Agile project management” to create a workable schedule and development environment. This method is becoming so popular because of the benefits it creates for the team and the client alike. The basic idea behind agile development is to limit your production period to a strict time frame. The duration of this type of project is measured in weeks rather than months, and the work is performed in a highly collaborative manner. Teams share information in an open, free exchange of ideas, quickly and collectively building a prototype application. Each revision of the application is called an “iteration”, and these typically last one to four weeks. The iterations are like miniature projects of their own, and they include all the necessary tasks to release a new functionality: planning, requirements, analysis, design, coding, testing, and documentation.

One of the benefits to Agile methods is that it emphasizes personal, real-time communication over written documents and virtual correspondence. Agile teams are housed in clusters which include all the people necessary to the project. At a minimum, this includes programmers and their “customers” (customers are the people who define the product; they may be product managers, business analysts, or actual customers). The agile fishbowl may also include testers, interaction designers, technical writers, and managers. This allows the team necessary access to each other, and reduces the chances of miscommunication and failure to meet deadlines.

Agile methods also emphasize project functionality as the primary measure of progress. When an iteration is complete, the client has a working model of the application to explore, test, and critique. The real benefit here is the efficiency. Agile methods produce completely developed and tested features (a very small subset of the whole) every few weeks or months. Not only will your clients be astounded by the speed of completion, but your team will have the satisfaction of churning out products that truly meet the needs of the customers.

Combined with the preference for face-to-face communication, agile development produces very little written documentation relative to other methods. For this reason, they are sometimes characterized as being at the opposite end of the spectrum from “plan-driven” or “disciplined” methodologies. This distinction is misleading, as it implies that agile methods are “unplanned” or “undisciplined.” A more fair distinction is to say that methods exist on a continuum from “adaptive” to “predictive”. A predictive method would be more rigid, focus on a pre-written action plan, and have a strict schedule. Agile methods exist on the “adaptive” side of this continuum. Adaptive methods focus on adjusting quickly to changing realities. When the needs of a project change, an adaptive team changes their focus as well. This allows major changes to be incorporated into the existing schedule and prevents delays.

A major mistake that is made when using an agile process is to assume that you don’t have to plan or you can “make it up as you go”. This is the furthest from what agile is all about and such an approach will only lead to disaster. Understanding the goals, metrics, scenarios and audience, including high-level requirements, are key ingredients for making agile methods work. Combining the power of the iterative nature of Agile with clear goals and focused team is the best way to maximize the benefits and promise of this methodology.

For more information about agile methodology and the benefits of using this technique, visit www.agilemanifesto.org.