In fact, wikis are often developed and managed by teams outside of IT, and often without IT's support or knowledge. Jeff Brainard, director of product marketing for Socialtext, observes that small groups within a company will often bypass IT and start with wiki software packaged in a network-ready appliance or hosted service. If a group of employees goes the free, do-it-yourself route, he says, they can create and maintain their wiki for a short-term project, without needing to get IT involved. Jessamyn West, a library technology consultant and author of the Librarian.net blog, has used Wetpaint and other software for various wikis. "It's empowering to see what you can do on your own. Some tools are often so user-friendly that, if you can use Word, you can use them."

At some companies, users may bring in IT only if they decide to deploy wikis enterprisewide, and need to integrate the wiki application with the larger IT infrastructure. "We have an incredibly savvy group here," says Wharton's Milne. "If they feel comfortable with the technology, we say go for it. If a number of faculty converge on the same solution, we will support that."

But at other companies, such as EMC, employees are discouraged from using any platform that IT doesn't endorse. "We do limit use of non-IT-supported wikis for security and access reasons," says Pagliarulo.

Despite the ease of using most wiki software, as with other applications, there are some benefits to letting a vendor worry about the back-end aspects. Socialtext, for example, not only sets up and monitors wikis for its customers, it also helps brand and market them to users. The company's customers take different approaches to wiki management: Humana uses appliances that are hosted in Socialtext's data centre, while Symantec has deployed the product behind its firewall.

Outline the Wiki's Structure With a Small Team

Once you decide to deploy wikis, you'll need to set up rules for using them. These include defining to what extent end users will be able to edit wiki pages, setting standards for how administrators will respond to updates from users, and setting rules around uploading text files or videos.

Two years ago, Michele Hovet, IT director for the city of Arvada, Colorado, assigned a team of five to develop the city's first wiki using MediaWiki software. "We wanted a place to look up all the projects that were happening around the city and to view information and updates," says Hovet. She chose MediaWiki because it was free and easy to set up, although she plans to look at other applications for future projects. The IT team used the wiki to share project management information and documents. Two Web developers set up the wiki, working with other IT staff members and project managers who designed the wiki's framework, populating it with a list of topics relevant for project management.

Pagliarulo used a six-member team at EMC when the IT department began planning its first project management wiki, which was intended for a development team of 30 people. Those six included an architect and a systems administrator, who worked with the others to evaluate the server environment and analyze how much storage space would be required to support the wiki's growth.

If you think your wiki has an audience beyond its primary contributors, get their input too. For example, if salespeople are creating a wiki, it would be valuable for marketing staff to be able to see it so they are aware of new projects or tools the sales team is using.

Most wiki tools allow developers to build in shortcuts for end users. If consistency is important across a department or company, wikis that offer auto-generated templates make it easy for users to create and edit wiki pages while ensuring that all the pages look the same, says West. The template can have, for example, a standard header. "And if you want to make a change to all the pages, you just change the template once," she adds.