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… or month or year or however long it takes to figure this out. And I offer a nice meal (more than a bowl of soup) to anyone who can solve or inspire me to solve this problem.

I attended a great presentation today at TechColumbus with Rich Hoeg of Honeywell. The topic was “Successful utilization of Web 2.0 and Social Networking Tools Within the Corporate Environment” and though the subject is anyway of general interest to me, I specifically went to see if I could find an answer to something that has been a pain point.

Now, I know that web2.0/ enterprise2.0 is all about being organic, collaborative and less rigid. (Sometimes I think I should write a book on it, in fact – because I haven’t seen a resource yet that really addresses the intersection of enterprise2.0 with regulations or standards.) And I’m totally on board with agile processes and embracing change in the middle of a project. But plain and simple, there does need to be a controlled version of this “thing” you’re creating – unless you’re creating a bowl of jello.

So here’s the problem in the most tangible terms I can muster:
Say we’re using a wiki within a project team to collaborate on the requirements for a new product. The wiki does version control each change, and each contribution is, in effect, a review record – so we have a controlled document and a review – easy, quick, organic (and compliant.) And at some point in the collaborative process, we get to a point where we all more or less agree that we’re on the same page about the requirements (or product definition, or design, or whatever the deliverable is..) Once we have reached that place of agreement, ideas continue to flow. And they may or may not be incorporated into the product.

Like this:

So at those points of consensus, we need to be able to point to this ever-changing collaborative ‘document’ and say, “This is what we agreed to” (for now.) And as collaboration continues and new points of consensus are reached, we adjust our plans and say, “Now this is what we’re doing.” .. and that change process can be formal or informal

So to summarize the question:
Within the tool itself (in my case, MediaWiki) how do you guide a consumer of that information to the version of the wiki page that represents the ideas that have formal agreement? As more ideas are contributed on a wiki page, and some of those ideas may not gain acceptance, we want to direct users to a previous version of the page that we agreed was our end product. (until the time comes that we agree that a later version is our end product.)

Without using cut & paste or saving a snapshot to another medium, how can this be done? Lunch or dinner awaits…

.. erm, that is – how can this be done easily by the end user, without a lot of clicking and BS? Wiki extensions would be great, as long as the process to the end user is as simple as a page edit – with a simple tag, perhaps.

Earlier posts on Enterprise2.0