1. IBM Research © 2006 IBM Corporation Building Trust in an Enterprise Wiki Catalina Danis 1 and David Singer 2 1 Social Computing Group, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center 2 Almaden Information Services, IBM Almaden Research Center www.research.ibm.com

2. IBM Research © 2006 IBM Corporation 2Building Trust in an Enterprise WikiNovember 4, 2006 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

3. IBM Research © 2006 IBM Corporation 3Building Trust in an Enterprise WikiNovember 4, 2006 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

4. IBM Research © 2006 IBM Corporation 4Building Trust in an Enterprise WikiNovember 4, 2006 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?

5. IBM Research © 2006 IBM Corporation 5Building Trust in an Enterprise WikiNovember 4, 2006 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

6. IBM Research © 2006 IBM Corporation 6Building Trust in an Enterprise WikiNovember 4, 2006

7. IBM Research © 2006 IBM Corporation 7Building Trust in an Enterprise WikiNovember 4, 2006

8. IBM Research © 2006 IBM Corporation 8Building Trust in an Enterprise WikiNovember 4, 2006 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

9. IBM Research © 2006 IBM Corporation 9Building Trust in an Enterprise WikiNovember 4, 2006 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

10. IBM Research © 2006 IBM Corporation 10Building Trust in an Enterprise WikiNovember 4, 2006 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

11. IBM Research © 2006 IBM Corporation 11Building Trust in an Enterprise WikiNovember 4, 2006 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

12. IBM Research © 2006 IBM Corporation 12Building Trust in an Enterprise WikiNovember 4, 2006 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 ; it is very interesting. Is it possible to get your tool 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.

13. IBM Research © 2006 IBM Corporation 13Building Trust in an Enterprise WikiNovember 4, 2006 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