Publication

Wikis are increasingly used in diversesettings to organize large amounts of information into concise articles and to enable broad feedback and proposed changes to that information. The BKCASE Project recently released a draft of the Guide to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) as a wiki (www.sebokwiki.org). To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time a wiki has been used as the underlying technology for a global community to develop what is hoped to be the definitive taxonomy, vocabulary, and guide to knowledge in a discipline. This paper describes the approach taken by the authors in setting up the wiki, the wiki’s governance process, how authors used the wiki collaboratively to create the latest draft of the SEBoK, how the wiki is being used by SEBoK reviewers from aroundthe world, a set of lessons learned from adoption to implementation, and the positive impact the wiki is having on both the quality of the SEBoK and the speed with which the SEBoK is maturing. Analogous efforts to create standards, reference curricula, and other community documents should consider adopting a wiki as their underlying technology together with the appropriate governance model to enable effective authoring and review.