(^50) 97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know
Use a Wiki.
Use a Wiki.
Adrian Wible
New York, New York, U.S.
WIKIS ARE A gREAT MEChAnISM to centralize access to your project infor-
mation. Hopefully, the wiki will be updated multiple times daily and will
always be open in a window on team members’ desktops.
To prevent you from wasting any precious brain cells that may be needed for
the actual project work, I’ve provided some suggestions for pages you might
include on your wiki. While creating these, you are sure to have ideas about
customizing the site for your own software project:
• Stakeholders. Have space for topics such as up-to-the-minute project sta-
tus, short-term issues, long-term issues, risk, budget tracking, and mile-
stone achievements.
• Developers. Add information such as the connection string to connect to
the QA database. Fellow programmers won’t wasting time trying to locate
the code from other random sources. Team members can share informa-
tion on topics like coding standards, build and deployment procedures,
common pitfalls, and use of advanced coding techniques such as depen-
dency injection.
• General information. The software project manager should add the help
desk phone number, team roles and responsibilities, and individual team
member contact information here.
• Team calendars. Use this site to post team calendars. One great trick is to
use an embedded iFrame pointing to a Google calendar.
• Meeting minutes. Archive meeting minutes so the team can easily refresh
its memory on the details covered in past meetings. Also, team members
can quickly reference the minutes to research or prepare for future meetings.