Work and wellness: Confluence Space Cleanup Play 🧹

[#1]

Confluence Space Cleanup Play

Complete our new Play with your team to declutter your shared workspace and power knowledge-sharing and collaboration.

Download the PDF version of Play instructions here or follow the instructions below⤵️

Give it a try then tell us about your experience or share tips, tricks, or takeaways from completing the Play by choosing one of these options:

💬 Comment on this article,

✍️ start a Community discussion to recap your experience (link it in the comments 👇),

🤳 or record a reply to this Vouch prompt! 

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What you'll need 

REMOTE	IN-PERSON	ATLASSIAN TEMPLATES
Video conferencing with screen sharing	Meeting space	Trello template ↗️
Digital collaboration tool (see templates)	Whiteboard, or large sheet of paper
	Markers
	Sticky notes
	Stickers for voting
	Timer

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Instructions for running this Play

1. Prep (10 mins)

For remote teams, utilize a Trello board (follow these instructions↗️ to copy the Play template board linked here↗️). For in-person teams, provide team members with sticky notes and prepare a large sheet of paper or a whiteboard.

Appoint one person to document outcomes and action.

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2. Set the stage (10 mins)

Set the ground rules for the meeting:

• There are no “right” or “wrong” answers
• Always assume positive intent

Restate the purpose of the play: to decide which pages on your team space should be removed, archived, or exported in order to de-clutter it.

To truly clean your team space, it’s important to have some regular maintenance to purge the pages that are outdated or no longer relevant. Set the stage by defining “clutter” - what does this mean to your team and how does it impact your team’s Confluence usage?

For example, “Clutter is outdated or irrelevant content that makes our page tree difficult to navigate and prevents us from accessing relevant knowledge/information.”

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 3. Evaluate (20 mins)

Give everyone 10-20 minutes to respond to these prompts:

1. What is confusing about how our team uses Confluence?
2. What seems like clutter in our Confluence spaces or pages?
3. Is there a better way to organize our team content?

When time is up, take 5 minutes to have everyone share the responses they contributed to expand on or clarify their thinking. Consolidate any duplicative responses.

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4. Audit (10 mins)

Set a 5-minute timer and have everyone vote on the 5 items that they perceive to be most detrimental to making your Confluence space neat and clean. Cast your votes with stickie notes in-person or use the Voting Power-Up to endorse Trello cards.

Once everyone has voted, arrange responses (stickies or Trello cards) from most impactful to least impactful in order of upvotes each response received (more upvotes = more impactful). Identify the 5 most impactful items.

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5. Brainstorm solutions (10 mins)

As a team, spend 10 minutes brainstorming solutions to each of the highest impact items, noting the feasibility of implementing each of the proposed solutions, such as:

• Archiving important but out-of-date pages
• Exporting pages that should kept in pdf form for easy distribution outside the company
• Deleting pages that are empty or have little content on them

Have a facilitator moderate how long is spent discussing each item.

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6. Prioritize (10 mins)

Set a timer for 3-5 minutes and have everyone vote on 3 items that they would like to prioritize for housekeeping.

Tally votes to determine which issues your team will prioritize implementing solutions for.

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7. Next steps (50 mins)

Now that your team’s priorities are set, discuss and document next steps in a Confluence page.

• Create DACIs for implementing each of the solutions
• Note next steps for each solution and assign ownership with action items using the /Action item command
• Set deadlines for each action item and a final deadline for all to be completed.

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Follow-up

Connect with the group a few days after the final deadline and make sure nothing is outstanding. Gather input as to whether the clean up created a more usable Confluence team space. If more clean up is suggested, consider running this Play again and commit to doing it annually, bi-annually, or as the team make-up or responsibilities change.

[Summer Hogan]

This looks like an awesome activity! Our team space could definitely use some clean up so I'll be doing this with my team when we have time! Thanks @Meg Bailey 

[Meg Bailey]

@Summer Hogan awesome, can't wait to hear how it goes! 

[Jax Blunt]

This looks like a really useful idea, and I've proposed it to my team. One thing though, I tried to look at the link to the community article, and I just get a warning "

Nothing to see here...

You don't have sufficient privileges to view this page.

" am assuming that isn't what I should see? 

[Sharon Tan]

Hi @Jax Blunt sorry to hear this! To clarify, you're referring to the link to create a new Community article (https://community.atlassian.com/t5/forums/postpage/board-id/confluence-articles), or the current page?

[Jax Blunt]

The link to create a new community article that you've posted here as well as above. 

[Monique vdB]

@Jax Blunt you need author permissions to create an article, which I have just assigned to you! Try the link again :)

[Jax Blunt]

@Monique vdB Brilliant, thank you! That takes me to a form, so I'll get to that as soon as I've convinced people we need to clean up. 

[tobias beers]

@Crispijn Wals We should do that!

[Crispijn Wals]

@tobias beers We definitely should do that! 

[Andrew van Ingen {ServiceRocket}]

I myself have managed and maintained an intranet for 10 years and came across similar problems.

I am now in a market research role and was asked to find feedback for "Birdview", which is free.  https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1223906/birdview-for-confluence-preview?tab=overview&hosting=cloud

Basically, it is a way to visualize Confluence structure in a 'mindmap' format, and organize content with drag and drop. I was wondering if you would see a use-case for this in your line of work.

Your thoughts are valuable because I believe it is helpful to hear from different people how this app could be used and what jobs need to be done.

Would you be willing to check it out and let me know your thoughts?

[cwebb2]

I love this! And now teams can use Confluence Whiteboards to run this play!