Maintaining a Confluence Space

A lot of work goes into deploying a successful Confluence space. This can take the form of extensive planning, stakeholder/customer identification and needs mapping, feature assessment and training. Groups that successfully navigate this challenge are rewarded with a useful Confluence space, one where users can quickly find relevant content and get on with their daily work.

Unfortunately many groups never get this far and instead they quickly deploy Confluence without appropriate planning or support. Even groups that do get this far, however, can quickly run into trouble if they don’t keep improving their space. All of the front-end planning and preparation goes out the window as everything falls apart.

I frequently use a library as an analogy for Confluence - without proper maintenance and updates it books would quickly be lost and users would become frustrated. Fortunately, maintaining a Confluence space isn’t too hard, and doesn’t have to require a lot of time or effort.

Schedule it out

The first step in maintaining Confluence is to make time to maintain it. This begins with simply scheduling time to sit down and assess everything. Personally I like to have a recurring calendar event every 3 months for this. I find 3 months is long enough for things to need updating, but not so quickly that I get burned out. That said, if you have large spaces, or particularly sensitive/important spaces, you may want to perform targeted reviews more regularly.

Scheduling it in advance also helps ensure it fits in with other priorities. Frequently groups realize they need to make adjustments, but already have a full calendar of other projects or things that need to get done. This makes it much more challenging as other priorities frequently win out over maintenance. It is, however, incredibly tempting to cancel or “move” your scheduled review. Resist that urge! Building the habit of regular reviews is important.

Get a team

It can be tempting to try and maintain Confluence all by yourself, or with a small group. While this can be possible with very small instances or installations, I find that getting more people involved both helps lighten the load but also improve the process. Getting more people involved gives you more perspectives on how things can be improved, and what can be added. 

Ideally you’ll have worked with a group in the past to improve or maintain your Confluence, however, you should always ask yourself if others should join in. You might be surprised at how many people want to help improve things! Including others in your group also exposes more people to Confluence, which can help build a group of super users you can leverage in other ways.

Get Feedback

Just like you shouldn’t jump into deploying a system without understanding its needs, you also shouldn’t just start changing things without feedback. You’ll likely have a good idea of what should be improved - after all you’re likely working in Confluence pretty regularly. Just like having a team gives you a better perspective on everything, gathering feedback on what should be improved is incredibly helpful.

This could be as simple as posting an instant message asking folks what they think would be beneficial, or more complex like a survey or short meetings to gather information. Regardless of how you gather this information, taking time to listen to the people using Confluence will give you some great ideas on what needs to be improved.

Adjust

After every maintenance cycle take some time to ask yourself what you can be doing better on an ongoing basis to keep things running smoothly. This could be as simple as keeping notes on what you did this round, or standing up a more complex process to update content regularly. Regardless, make sure you’re critically reviewing what you can be doing better so help keep things improving.

This is also a good habit to get into in general - consistently ask yourself how you can do better and soon you’ll find yourself improving

Conclusion

Keeping a Confluence space updated is simple - but not easy. Ensuring you have time is the biggest hurdle to overcome, but don’t forget to invite others along for the ride!