It was the final day of the Agile Processes And Project Management training carried out at PPSL. As recommended for agile teams, I introduced couple of tools to improve the team performance. One was to use a web based content management system (like Drupal, Wiki) to establish communication needs and maintain software models created and documentation of projects only to a sufficient degree. These tools provide WYSIWYG editing, versioning pages, easy image embedding, file attachments, update notification features and hence are ideal for agile teams and don't burden them.
During the final discussion held, John - a participant - suggested a wonderful approach to capture patterns, best practices and new learnings from projects. Given that most of the models, descriptions,... of the projects would just reside in the content management system, John suggested using the taxonomy based classification feature (found in many content management systems) and tag the pages while they are being written, edited or may be after an iteration or project review to indicate that a pattern, best practice or a new learning is present in the corresponding page.
Later on, if someone wants to search for innovation and learn (from the same project, from other projects or from past projects), he or she can simply use the taxonomy based search feature of the content management system. Different classification schemes are possible (flat, hierarchical, free tagging, multiple select,...). Hence, you can have pages tagged as "UI, Best Practice", "Database, New Pattern", "Kernel, Concurrency, Coding, Innovation" and so on.
Simple, practical, effective and almost requires no extra time. Ideal way to proceed!