Principia: Power from Simplicity

Received wisdom among many development team with whom I have worked over the years is that a development wiki is a good idea. Experience suggests that this is not a universal truth and on some projects the wiki may actually be harmful.

The main benefit, and problem, with Wikis is that they are maintained by technicians who are expert in their field but not necessarily good at presenting written information. Most wikis are opened when the project is young and these technical people find they have time on their hands before the heavy lifting on the project starts. Creating a wiki seems like a useful way to employ their time until the project proper kicks off. As the project progresses the wiki is maintained less and less as these technicians become increasingly involved in the project and have less time to maintain the content of the wiki.

Failing to maintain a wiki is worse than not having one in the first place. If the information cannot be relied upon then this devalues the wiki and people will tend to be distrustful of anything on it. This in turn means people are increasingly unwilling to update the wiki because no one wants to spend time maintaining something that is not used.

When wikis work, they work well. Providing a useful communication channel for project information.

Wikis work well when:

• Contributors are all, at least, competent at communicating through writing. (We don’t need Tolstoy, just clear concise writing.)
• The project experts have time to both create and maintain the wiki content.
• Someone is assigned to ensure that key project information on the wiki is always available and accurate.

Wikis won’t work when:

• They are nothing more than a collection of notes.
• They are not maintained.
• They are not clear and concise.

Should you use a wiki on your next project. Definitely, providing you realise that it takes some effort to maintain it as a useful tool.