Grow Your Own Teamwork Tools BEFORE Installing a CMS
Amy is right on the mark here! And the article on CMS watch is a must-read for anyone working or starting to work in this space. I think one of the real barriers to collaboration and KM is ease of use and flexibility. In one former company I worked in Lotus Notes was the collaboration tool of choice. I never figured it out. I never liked it. Unfortunately many large companies hear “open source” and just shut down. Buggy, unreliable, etc. Jeez if they have a website there is a really good chance that their site is run by an open source piece of software or the commercial child of one.
In any case, I have been experimenting more with the idea of biz-blogs and blikis. I think these are good stepping stones to collaboration and KM. You do have to make it easy or people will, as the CMSWatch article points out, go for Yahoo groups and other public tools. Public tools can be great, but there is a risk for data loss, your competitors getting their hands on your data, amongst many other risks. Message to IT: Help people experiment, you'll look like heroes if it is really successful.
Increasingly, content – whether a book, database, report, or the amassed knowledge of an organization – is the result of teamwork. A team could be a few people in scattered offices working on a common project; or a network of editors, designers, and authors producing publications.