IBM Research
Building Trust in an
Enterprise Wiki
Catalina Danis1 and David Singer2
1 Social Computing Group, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
2 Almaden Information Services, IBM Almaden Research Center
www.research.ibm.com
© 2006 IBM Corporation
IBM Research
The problem
 IBM’s Research Division consists of about 3000 individuals in nine
locations in five countries on three continents
–Plus remote workers
 Two main stakeholder groups shape the research agenda:
–Strategists and senior managers who make funding decisions
–Researchers who propose and execute the research
 Management and Strategists have a Lotus Notes database used to
create the annual research agenda but…
–It is not updated during the year and is created afresh annually
–Most Researchers do not have access to this database
 There is, in fact, no single place where Researchers can find
complete information on the current research program
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Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki
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IBM Research
Goals of the ResearchWiki
 Opportunity for an initial subset -- 1200 researchers
distributed over 8 worldwide laboratories -- to collaborate
around research projects
–Goal is to encourage early disclosure of planned research
–So that it may be evolved collaboratively based on identified
synergies with worldwide colleagues
 Replacement of the Lotus Notes database for this subset
 Continued use of the ResearchWiki through the year and
into subsequent years to provide continuity
 Availability to all of Research, but initial emphasis on the
“Software Strategy” area
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Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki
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Why a Wiki?
 Enabling open access, contribution, and
discussion of the research agenda throughout its
lifecycle
 Providing a single “starting point” to find out what
is happening in research
 It’s Web 2.0 – what else need we say?
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Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki
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Wiki design issues
 Two complementary streams need to be brought into harmony to
create a plan
–Strategy documents
–Project descriptions
 Formally-defined taxonomy for project/proposal categorization
must be surfaced
 All pages are editable by anyone – caused some concern going in
–Modified the wiki engine to create “Discussion” areas on each page
–@SIG@ construct to “sign/date” entries – not frequently used!
–Page edit history shows userid of each editor
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Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki
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© 2006 IBM Corporation
IBM Research
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Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki
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© 2006 IBM Corporation
IBM Research
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Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki
November 4, 2006
© 2006 IBM Corporation
IBM Research
Why is trust an issue?
 “Culture change” from the past model
–More openness – with respect to audience and nature of
content
Distributed organization
–Lack of face-to-face opportunities
–Cultural differences
 Research organization is a meritocracy and therefore
competition is built into the system
 Overlay of funding business process adds another layer of
competition
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Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki
November 4, 2006
© 2006 IBM Corporation
IBM Research
Design decisions to promote development of trust
 Decision to open it to Researchers only, not to the rest of the enterprise
–Leverage shared identity
–But currently an issue, as strategists want to give access to their non-Research
partners
 Linked discussion area to each project description
–Separate spaces for one topic – how will people sort their contributions between the
spaces?
 No anonymous access
–Although unless people sign contribution, requires effort to figure out who said what
 Named contacts for wiki issues
–not just “ResearchWikiFeedback@us.ibm.com” or a “Feedback” link
 Open Trac/Subversion for issues and code
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Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki
November 4, 2006
© 2006 IBM Corporation
IBM Research
Experiences during early usage
 First test of openness: Feedback being given to project descriptions by
strategists
–Even we were reticent to disclose until we had a polished description
–Strategists have received complaints through email about what were perceived as
overly critical comments
 Developing norms about editing content created by others
–Out of band negotiations precedes changes: asking for permission and alerting
colleague of changes
 Can I trust that the work model has really changed?
–Do all stakeholders understand the new content in the same way?
 Degree of content attribution on the content page varies
–Some are signed with full name/userid
–Some only with first name – in vs. out group
–Some choose to be anonymous though of course can be traced
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Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki
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© 2006 IBM Corporation
IBM Research
Some early usage statistics
 Total unique users: 832
 236 individuals created pages but 346 individuals
edited them
–About half the authors edited pages they did not initiate
 632 pages have been created
–63 of these have active discussions
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Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki
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© 2006 IBM Corporation
IBM Research
An early success story
From: S@IBM India Research Lab, New Delhi, India
To: M@IBM Watson Research Lab, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Hi,
I saw your proposal on <topic>; it is very interesting.
Is it possible to get your tool <version> 0.1?
From: M@IBM Watson Research Lab
To: ResearchWiki Team
aha, the research wiki is working... i don't think i ever got a note like this in 3 years with
<previous system>.
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Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki
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© 2006 IBM Corporation
IBM Research
Some future work to improve user experience
 Hosted discussions by senior management and/or
strategists
–Demonstrate to researchers that management is involved
–A “training wheels” approach – create opportunities for
discussion, possibly among competitors, under “watched”
circumstances
 Visualizations of activity on project description pages
–Communicate “aliveness” of a page
–Enable page owners to see who is interested in their work
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Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki
November 4, 2006
© 2006 IBM Corporation