Ask HN: Discussion on fixing internal enterprise communications

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6217331

by macca321 • 13 years ago

3 3 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm currently contracted at a medium size enterprise (100 developers, 500 other staff). Communication (within the tech team) seems to happen mainly through email (although there is a sharepoint, a yammer) and old knowledge is found by a process of of person to person investigative archaeology - the online tooling doesn't get used.

The process is both disheartening, and slows down and complicates delivery of software.

It doesn't seem that this is an issue being seriously tackled by management, (perhaps it's not actually a Real Problem, just one perceived by me!). Maybe having bought in Yammer and Sharepoint, they have 'lead the horse to water' already?

Has anyone encountered a good solution for these problems, or have any ideas? Do you have any 'nudge behaviour' style tips* for encouraging people to work with the existing tools? Is there a good startup idea waiting to tackle this problem, or is it just that the management haven't twigged to it as an issue? Discuss! :)

caw2• 13 years ago

Yes you've correctly identified a problem. It's sad that I have to "know a guy" to sometimes get stuff done.

Unfortunately, no one with purchasing power cares.

You can try promoting "social" and "collaboration", and you might get some sales out of that since those buzzwords are hot. However, you won't fundamentally change anything because ultimately someone bought your software to fluff up their annual review, and then it gets dropped like a hot rock after the coast is clear.

You're probably better off with IT self-service, it's a hot enterprise area right now.

macca321• 13 years ago

You make it sound like there's no software on earth that can fix internal communications in an appreciable way.

Do you think that with a combination of the right software and sufficient management willpower it could be done? e.g. MEMO: "ALL QUESTIONS TO OTHER STAFF MEMBERS MUST GO THROUGH THE INTERNAL KNOWLEDGE TOOL. THAT IS ALL."

I wonder if a tool unified with email could do it. It would be hard to get Outlook out of everyones' cold, dead hands though...

caw2• 13 years ago

Heh, if I sound like that it's because I'm disillusioned with my experiences.

You can totally fix internal communications, but the employees have to own it. If the employees don't feel the desire to share the knowledge, it will never get done.

Sufficient management push could get stuff done. But I've got an internal knowledge management tool as well (fully ITIL compliant!), and from the emails there's a bunch of people who will avoid the tool or make low quality knowledge articles.

Why not integrate with Outlook? That would be pretty badass, because as soon as someone wrote a plugin for Outlook with our ticket management system I dropped in like 3x as many tickets as I used to.