Author content collectively across departments

The core and extended team members use the wiki to begin development work, collaborate on the first technical report, and more. The wiki allows the team and management to monitor progress, get information, and modify content in a flash.

Bill uses his contacts in manufacturing to determine how various design options impact manufacturing and to get his peers to help him write the content for the report that Rebecca is working on for this project. Rebecca uses the wiki to collaborate on theoretical calculations and to gain design input from her development peers to help her add content to this report as well. Other team members use the wiki to coordinate experiments, organize data and customer feedback, and to identify areas that have not been taken into account. Rebecca also decides to use the wiki to store meeting minutes as well to their weekly status meetings. She uses the wiki during team meetings to generate points of discussion and to develop upcoming experimental plans during team meetings.

Bill creates wiki pages to gauge design selection verses manufacturing impact

Bill is excited about the ErgoLine project, because this development project is involving the manufacturing team at the start of the project. He really thinks the management team at Power Renovations has the right idea. By having a process in place that addresses development, manufacturing, and marketing needs throughout the project, the customer will benefit and so will the company. Rebecca has asked him to consolidate manufacturing issues, costs, and concerns so that she can incorporate this information into a report.

After reading a previous blog comment from Bill, Rebecca invites Ed, Glen, and Rita to the place so that Bill can gain input from other process engineers. She uses IBM^® Lotus^® Sametime^® to start a chat with Bill to let him know that she has added Bill's peers to the default Editor role in the place. With this role, everyone can edit, create, and make comments to the wiki page that Bill wants to start.

Bill creates four wiki pages to start authoring content with Ed, Glen, and Rita. In the title field of each wiki page, he describes what input he needs and who should provide this input. For each wiki page, he highlights the format he needs and other relevant project assumptions. Bill wants his peers to help write the content for the manufacturing section of Rebecca's report. Bill adds the following wiki pages to the place:

Scrap rates to be provided by Ed El-Amon
Set up times to be provided by Glen Cloud
Manufacturing costs to be provided by Rita Ferrar
Draft report on manufacturing impact

Rebecca creates wiki pages to gain development feedback from her peers and to keep the team on track

Rebecca creates multiple wiki pages as well. While Bill is working with manufacturing, she utilizes her resources from the development side. To gain the feedback she needs, she follows Bill's example and invites other development engineers to the place so they can help her author content for the first project report.

While she is using the wiki, she adds other pages that will help the team stay on track, like important links to other places and high level project milestones. Rebecca adds the following wiki pages to the place.

Useful links in other places that the team will frequently need to access
Project time line
Theoretical calculations
Assumptions for ergonomic handle designs
Proposed experiments
Plans for Experiments 1-5
Draft report on development options

Other team members see how Bill and Rebecca use the wiki and add content

Dan, the marketing representative on the team, sees how Bill and Rebecca use the wiki to not only author content with others but to get information out there fast. While the team debates which material to pursue for this project, Dan performs a competitive analysis to evaluate current sales at Renovations and to evaluate the power tool products that sold the most at Renovations. In addition, Dan talks to customer support at Power Renovations to categorize customer complaints related to comfort in long-term use of power tools. Dan plans to write a formal report that gets routed to management for approval and store this report in the library. In the meantime, he knows this information will come in handy for the team at this phase of the project. Dan decides to place the raw data in the wiki so the team can use this information while evaluating design options to keep the project rolling on schedule.

After reading Rebecca's page on proposed experiments, Lucille edits Rebecca's page with scheduling dates. In addition, she coordinates the test plans with the development and manufacturing labs. Lucille adds these details to Rebecca's wiki page.

Harry has been keeping an eye on the wiki and blog pages. He knows once the development trials begin that he will become a key member of the team. As he is reading the wiki content, he realizes that neither Bill or Rebecca have taken into account the costs associated with reworked product. He also anticipates that the new handle designs could lead to an increase in quality issues that do not affect the functionality of the product but that do affect the visual appeal. He adds a blog post requesting that these additional factors be taken into account.

Dmitri, Rebecca's manager, looks at Rebecca's experimental plans. He thinks her experimental costs are too high and requests that Rebecca consult with Dina Maroni, a statistician, to help her to design experiments that are lower in cost but still statistically sound. He adds a post to the blog and adds some comments to Rebecca's Proposed Experiments page. He sends a link to Rebecca's wiki page in a chat and tells Dina to add suggestions to this wiki page. Dmitri adds a blog post encouraging the team to keep up the great work with using the wiki. The wiki allows management to keep an eye on the team's progress without having to wait for formal technical reports and presentations to be prepared.

How does the walk-through change if the team uses Lotus Quickr, services for IBM Lotus Domino^®?

Bill plans to gain data for this report from Ed, Glen, and Rita using a feedback form. He creates a simple form named Ergonomic Comparison. Bill adds a task field as the first entry in the form to assign start and end dates, as well as project priority, and adds plain text fields for the remaining fields. The task field in this form allows the team to monitor the progress of this form in the Tasks folder.
Bill creates a page named Manufacturing Impact. He adds a table to the page summarizing the information he collected from the form. On this page, he asks that his colleagues write the section of the report that pertains to the data collected. The goal for this page is that Bill, Ed, Glen, and Rita author this section of Rebecca's report together and see the changes instantly for easy discussion during meetings.