A Note About Wiki Software

When I first heard the term wiki or wikiwiki years ago, I ignored it thinking it wasn't worth my time (possibly because of the way it sounds). However, the use of wiki software has spread like wildfire, and it has become an extremely effective tool to use for collaborating and knowledge management in a project.

According to Ward Cunningham, the inventor of wiki software, wiki is the "simplest online database that could possibly work." Wiki is collaborative software that is essentially installed in a web server and enables you to edit web pages using plain text (with various formatting options). Although this might sound almost too simple, it is a powerful concept.

In a software project, a wiki website serves as a central dumping ground (so to speak) for content, which members of a software team can add or change, collaboratively. This fits very well with the Agile and XP style of working in an iterative fashion. For example, online help documentation for a software being built can be assembled using wiki, iteratively and incrementally, over a period of time (over a two-month release, for example). In fact, most of the personal opinions you see in this book were accumulated using my wiki site over a period of almost a year. It helped to have quick access to editable web pages for a quick brain dump when I had an idea.

There are literally hundreds of wiki engines (software) out there developed in almost every programming language you could think of. There are wiki engines that work with flat-file databases and others that work with relational databases. Some wiki engines provide robust authentication/authorization, whereas others are for personal use. Your biggest problem will likely be deciding on which one to use.