Copyright © 2006 TietoEnator Corporation Using Community Tools To Improve Team Work Magnus Einarsson

Copyright © 2006 TietoEnator CorporationPage 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

Copyright © 2006 TietoEnator CorporationPage 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

Copyright © 2006 TietoEnator CorporationPage The tools that helped us reach our goals  Internal instant messaging server based on Jabber/XMPP  Wiki system for information collection

Copyright © 2006 TietoEnator CorporationPage What is a Wiki  A wiki is a collaborative web application which allows users to edit content  Uses simplified Wiki markup instead of HTML  Anybody can edit the pages  Revision control Picture from

Copyright © 2006 TietoEnator CorporationPage 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maintained  Where is the source document  Who can update it –Threshold to get content updated –Static –Often outdated information  Wiki –If you can access the information you have the tool needed to add more information –Easy to publish information –Change tracking/audit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

Copyright © 2006 TietoEnator CorporationPage 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

Copyright © 2006 TietoEnator CorporationPage 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!”

Copyright © 2006 TietoEnator CorporationPage 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

Copyright © 2006 TietoEnator CorporationPage 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

Copyright © 2006 TietoEnator CorporationPage 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

Copyright © 2006 TietoEnator CorporationPage 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

Copyright © 2006 TietoEnator CorporationPage Experiences  The IM system is a very good complement to using 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

Copyright © 2006 TietoEnator CorporationPage Resources  Wiki systems –Oddmuse –Mediawiki –Confluence –TWiki  Jabber/XMPP information –Everything about Jabber/XMPP –Wildfire server and Spark client –Original Jabber implementation