Confluence best practices information architecture

Question

I've noticed Atlassian use spaces to isolate individual product versions and it appears to work really well.

We have recently implemented JIRA and Confluence (both OnDemand) and are looking to fully utilize it's functionality properly and correctly. I'm aware a lot of this is open to interpretation but I'm looking for opinions, experiences and best practices.

We operate a single ecommerce website and use agile methodologies so we mostly don't know what we're going to develop and release or when. Our Confluence is configured with 3 spaces, Development, Testing and Operations - very different from how Atlassian have implemented it with versions.

* Development is currently used for specifying product requirements, documenting pre release checklists and actions and documenting general development processes.
* Testing is currently used for documenting test plans and cases for releases and general testing processes.
* Operations is used for infrastructure's use but in this example probably irrelevant.

Concerns are raised around the noise in Confluence in the future. What strategies could be used to maintain the space? Archiving is an obvious choice but seems like a mundane manual process. Our current setup obviously isolates the teams and reduces collaboration.

If we implement Confluence in a way such as Atlassian have, we have the benefit of the teams operating in the same space and collaborating more effectively but if we create a space each time, we have to create the 'space skeleton' every time which is also a manual process. Also if we don't know what will be developed and released in a version, it will be difficult to specify requirements using Confluence.

Does anybody have experience dealing with these sort of issues and have any advice on how to handle the situation and how do you manage your information architecture on Confluence and what problems do you face?

Maggie Modersohn · Answer

Hi @Robert Obuch

If you're looking for Best Practices, have a look at this webinar around setting up a sound information architecture in Confluence. It's scheduled for December 9th and you can read more about it here: 
http://bit.ly/11udV5U

Mick Davidson_o2ws6w · Answer

Robert,

You can create a space that is marked as Archive, and put all the old but keepable info there.You can use Tools/Remove to delete pages you don't want.

When you use the Archive functionality on a space, the space is not automatically added to the global search, so the redundant info doesn't appear in search results. If you run a global search there is an option in the results to add the archived space to the search.

To set a space to Archive, go to Browse/Space Admin then select the drop down menu by the Status field (under Edit Space Details) and select Archive.

Does that go anyway to resolving your problem?

Cheers.

Robert Obuch2 · Answer

Noise being the amount of redundant pages we would eventually have for releases and old/legacy work. I'm looking for strategies to manage this information when it becomes no longer relevant.