Introduction
Stack Overflow for Teams is the leading knowledge base for technical teams. Companies of all sizes leverage our solution to streamline workflows by creating a central and secure source of company information. This whitepaper gives more insight into how we help our customers in the Software industry organize and build a knowledge library for their teams.
Why we built Stack Overflow for Teams
Stack Overflow was created over 10 years ago by developers who wanted an online forum to ask questions and find answers about coding from fellow developers and engineers. Over time, it has become the largest developer-specific community in the world. Nearly 55 million developers visit the public Stack Overflow community each month.
We were asked by several large organizations to create a private version of the community that only their developers could access. Companies wanted a platform that developers were comfortable with and used regularly to ensure that adoption and usage would be high. So Stack Overflow for Teams was born. In the past few years we’ve helped thousands of teams find and share mission-critical information, all with the mission of helping the developer write the script of the future.
We see the same problem in companies across the world
When it comes to technical team challenges, it doesn’t matter how big of an organization or where they’re located, one thing unites them: Teams have too many tools and rely on tribal knowledge to get work done.
It’s already common knowledge that developers need “flow state” to produce their best work. This uninterrupted time to focus on the task at hand becomes harder to achieve when the information they need to do their jobs is spread across multiple apps and tools - and sometimes locked away in a subject matter expert. Technical team leaders can’t risk pings, dings, and shoulder-taps throwing the development and release cycle off in this ultra-competitive market.
So how does Teams solve for this?
Questions, answers, and articles in one place.
Stack Overflow for Teams works because it mimics the natural way that people discover information - through questions and answers. When you need to solve a problem, you automatically approach it in the form of a question. Team members access the platform, ask a question and find an answer. We’re even releasing longer-form content capabilities so teams can share updates and other information that doesn’t fit into the box of question or answer.
Empowering organic information-sharing.
Over time, information changes. The problem with wikis and static intranet solutions is that it falls to a handful of people to update. It’s impossible for just a few people to know everything, so by default, these solutions are lacking crucial information and aren’t as up-to-date as they need to be. Stack Overflow for Teams puts the power in the hands of team members. Questions can be asked by anyone and answered by anyone. When new information becomes available, team members can add to the content to create a richer, more accurate knowledge base.
Reducing workflow interruptions.
We see a common thread inside of technical teams around the topic of interruptions and distractions. Teams are more distributed than ever before and the way that we communicate with one another comes in the form of chat messages, email and phone calls. There is a lot of communication noise that developers have to deal with. A study done by the University of California and Humbolt University found that each interruption costs the team member up to 23 minutes on a task. Teams creates the space for team members to ask questions and share information when it works best for them.
A study done by Forrester TEI Consulting found that Stack Overflow for Teams delivered $14.42 million in benefits to the composite customer over three years and costs $4.95 million over the same time period. This puts the net present value (NPV) of Stack Overflow for Teams just shy of $9.5 million, with a return on investment (ROI) of 191%. Forrester quantified the benefits of Stack Overflow for Teams as follows:
- Time saved for employees who are searching for information: $2.3 million
- Time saved for employees who provide knowledge to their peers: $9.5 million
- Accelerated time-to-proficiency for new hires: $2.6 million
Built for Software Companies
We’re a software company ourselves, so we understand the need to move quickly on projects in order to win market share and build long-term revenue streams. Technical teams within software companies are often under tight deadlines and have high visibility from Executive teams and investors. When you add the stress of searching multiple locations--like Slack, Google Drive, Wiki, and email--on top of the already pressure-filled atmosphere, it’s a recipe for developer burnout. Technical teams need a familiar place to access critical knowledge to get back to work faster.
Summary
Teams of all shapes and sizes benefit from a streamlined and centralized source of information. Technical teams can see the most value from this system due to the demand for focused time to work on mission-critical projects that shape the future of the company. By protecting the time of your high-value employees, you’re not only protecting your business, but also creating a stable foundation of knowledge-sharing and growth within your team.
