Is collaboration right for you?

Chapter 4: Writing Collaboratively

Back from the long weekend and hopefully everyone enjoyed the extra time off and kept nice and warm! We're at it again today with the next installment of Andy's rendition of what we are learning in our Technical Writing class. This week's topic is on "Writing Collaboratively" which conveniently aligned with a team project we were assigned. During the last week I experienced several topics this chapter talks about firsthand and had to carefully navigate our group collaboration.

There are several advantages of working on a project with others as well as some distinct disadvantages. First let's look at some of the benefits of collaborating.

• Draws on a wider knowledge-base 
• Draws on a wider skill base 
• Able provide immediate feedback to each other 

There are some other positive sides to collaborating such as building communication and teamwork within the organization but I want to focus on the aspects that would directly improve the project at hand. By being a part of a team, you have access to not just your own skills, but your teammates skills as well. No one is an expert in everything so it is great to have access to other peoples strengths. It is often a great starting place to bounce ideas off each other, gather feedback, and perhaps learn things that you may not have known. Remember these are people just like you who have years of their own experiences. They probably know many things that you do not and it is often beneficial and even fun to use each other to learn more about the topic at hand. Sometimes teammates are able to bring up something that you had not thought of before, perhaps it is a problem with your idea, or maybe a solution that you had not conceived.

However, just as there are advantages to collaboration, there are also some very real disadvantages that must be taken into account when deciding if a collaborative approach is right for your project.

• Can be more time consuming
• Can lead to groupthink
• Can produce a disjointed document

As the very definition of collaboration requires that you work with others, this can cause inefficiencies when time is a factor. Conversations that you may have internally with your self are very fast and often not even realized. Unfortunately when others are involved you will have to communicate with them in some fashion. This can lead to slowing down your project even when the whole team agrees. When there are disagreements, this can quickly add a lot of time. 

Groupthink is an issue when people are weary of hurting others by critiquing their ideas or do not want to cause a scene. Often trying to be the "nice guy" can hurt the overall product.

Just as we saw an advantage of collaboration being that everyone is different with different backgrounds and ways of doing things, this can also be disadvantageous. For example, if writing separately with the intent to join everyones contributions at the end you may find that people's writing styles differ or they went a slightly different direction with their piece. This could contribute to a document feeling a lack of overall cohesiveness. 

Determining roles early on is a good way to set your team up for success. Letting everyone know exactly what they are responsible for will help keep them accountable as well as allow you to equally distribute the work load on the project. It is important to set roles and responsibilities after your teammates strengths have been identified. In a work environment this will be easy as your job title usually indicates your strengths but in a school environment this will require communication and getting to know each other.

When to collaborate and when to tackle it by yourself?

While this is not an easy question, it is often dictated by either the sheer size of the project, different skill sets required, or perhaps just plain constraints. Often when attempting to complete larger projects, the sheer size of the project dictates that you need several or many people with varying skills sets. A paper may need a Manager, writer, editor, graphic artist etc. and not one person is going to excel in all these skills. If is often just a function of time. Can one person finish this project by the necessary deadline? Perhaps it is an easy task, but you are given too much work to complete by the deadline? Well it sounds like you may need to collaborate.

Inevitably when attempting to tackle your next project, you or your manager will need to ask themselves is collaboration appropriate for this project? If the answer is yes, keep these important points in mind!