Software project: Handle team discussion , questions, answers etc.

Question

For an in house software project, what type of system I could use to centralize all the online team members discussion?

For our software development effort, currently our questions and answers are all scattered over emails.

Its hard to track ideas, questions, and answers etc.

What do you guys use? How do you manage such a situation?

Could a wiki be used for some thing like this? And if so, how could I get started? I have not done this before.

Our discussions could have sensitive information for the company as well so how could I address security?

Answer 1

I'd suggest redmine

It has a forum and wiki per project, as you seem to need, and a lot more features very usefull when dealing with a project that requires several members to participate. And its opensource!

The only "issue" is that it was written using Ruby on Rails.

Answer 2

I would say Twiki, its an open source enterprise wiki.

Needs sometime to get used to it, but once you are, you will find opening new pages and topics very easy and quick. One of the advantages IMO is its hosted on your own server

TWiki® - the Open Source Enterprise Wiki and Web 2.0 Application Platform

Answer 3

In terms of technology, I would definitely go for a wiki (and Twiki is certainly not a bad choice). If it's installed on your company's intranet then there is no issue in terms of security.

One thing to keep in mind about a wiki is that it requires some work to keep it maintained; it's easy (and sometimes tempting) for everyone in the team to constantly just add pages without taking any linking of pages or structure into account. The moral here: a wiki is a very helpful tool for helping in communication, but it doesn't come for free.

However, depending on the kinds of communication/discussion that you're talking about: definitely watch out that online communication isn't replacing face-to-face communication. Depending on the interpersonal skills of the members of the team, it can some times be too easy for some people to shift to e-mail/wiki/forum use instead of verbal communication. Even having daily stand-up meetings (a la SCRUM) can be very useful in ensuring that everyone knows what is going on in the team instead of relying on electronic communication.

Answer 4

My own distributed team has experienced a similar problem, and we've solved it in the following way.

Day-to-day we run a continuous group chat (Campfire is an option). Announcements, questions, and answers can happen in chat, and it's recorded. You can search past transcripts as needed. This is simple and lightweight.

We also use a wiki for more permanent content. Sometimes material that starts in chat migrates to the wiki. The advantage of a structured wiki is that it makes it easier to onboard new team members and maintain specific content like team norms (like Subversion's HACKING doc).

The benefit is that we keep fast and lightweight chat for transient questions and so on, but we still have the wiki to hold content once it's deemed important.