In VMware’s case, there are few to no project managers in the company (at least in R&D). It tends to be yet another hat for engineering managers to wear when they have a spare minute, so a responsibility like curating the wiki is treated as extremely low priority (read: it never gets done).

The idea behind the librarian was to establish at least one person for multiple teams to rely on for helping them organize and keep their information up to date. I agree that it could be overkill for many organizations where others are able to dedicate adequate time to the task.

As this article in the book was focused on PM things, the wiki idea was to provide a more shared responsibility to update relevant content, rather than requiring the PM to collect and distribute any/all information.

As a PM, I have taken responsibility on my projects for managing wiki organization so that it’s useful. So the PM is the curator… the team members are the contributors. It requires some work on the PM’s part – particularly in the early going, as wiki organization can morph drastically with the initial content. Once it’s organized though, and understood, folks get the hang of where to put particular content.

It’s like moving into a new house and organizing your garage. If you don’t provide some structure of where things go at the beginning, then you’re out of luck. But the effort at the beginning to establish order can make for a garage that requires only cursory maintenance over time. (Put up a peg-board !)

I don’t think it requires a librarian. Certainly, if you have significant documentation requirements that require a tech-writer, this sort of thing is right up their alley and can potentially be tacked on.

Thanks for the thought-provoking post.