Wikis versus Knowledge Management
by Bill Ives
Now you can say that this is apples and oranges and there is certainly some truth to this thought. However, many of the people who implemented knowledge management are now looking to implement wikis. What can they learn from their past experiences and what should they unlearn? I recently read, Stewart Mader’s excellent book, Wikipatterns. You can find a good general review of the book in this blog, see wikipatterns - The First Enterprise 2.0 Playbook by Jevon MacDonald.
Parts of Stewart’s book took me back ten or more years ago to promoting knowledge management best practices. I found it interesting to reflect on the differences and similarities between a top down system that required bottom up support and participation (aka KM) and a system that requires bottom up support and participation and offers a bottom up structure (aka wiki). Now you might say that a wiki is a tool and KM is an approach. However, it seems that wikis are also very much about an approach, more than just a tool, and KM relied on tools to enable its approach. I think more comparisons are valid, especially since both are about content. A wiki is a system for generating and organizing content and you can use one for a KM system. However, because of the bottom up structure you can use a wiki for many others things. I made the comparisons in a series of four posts that you can find on my blog:
Wikipatterns Comments - Part One - Wiki Uses vs KM
Wikipatterns Comments - Part Two - Pilot Guidelines - Wiki vs. KM
Wikipatterns Comments - Part Three - Good Patterns - Wiki vs. KM
Wikipatterns Comments - Part Four - Bad or Anti-Patterns - Wiki vs. KM
BTW I recently rode the wiki wiki bus in Honolulu. It was not quick quick but slow slow. They waited until lots of people arrived to get started. Fortunately I was not in a hurry to catch my flight.
