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Lunch Menu

What is it?

The Lunch Menu pattern encourages you to put time-sensitive content on the wiki. If there is content you know will be updated regularly, like a weekly cafeteria menu, put it on the wiki rather than sending it out on the email distribution list.

By centralizing the dynamic content and never emailing it, the team always knows where to look, and never runs the risk of finding out-dated information.

Usage

Identify content that changes frequently and build wiki pages around it. You can make useful, always current pages about many topics:

  • Weekly sales figures
  • Staff schedules or on-call rotations
  • Software build and test results

Example

The classic business-development "deal list" is a great candidate for the Lunch Menu pattern. In the pre-wiki-world, business development folks usually kept a spreadsheet detailing the current status of all their leads. They'd email that sheet out to their team-members to keep them up to date on the status. By putting that time-sensitive content on the wiki, the team can go straight to where they know the most up-to-date content will be.

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Related Patterns

  • Magnet - the magnet pattern emphasizes putting content exclusively on the wiki to attract people. Regularly updated, time-sensitive content is a perfect candidate for this.
  • Poker - this pattern encourages putting informal content on the wiki to give people further reason to visit and contribute to it.

Further Reading


Comments  (Hide)

- current content at 'time sensitive and location sensitive' (dated 2001 and 2002) does not appear to make ths same point to the 'lunch menu' discussion as it is about email/software systems that can be aware of context (with the key example being email programs being more responsive /adaptive to low bandwidth / large file situations)

Posted by James Mortimer at May 02, 2007 13:49

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