Just as this text takes a rhetorical approach to technical communication, this text also frames technical communication as a collaborative process. Beyond this text, there are many workplace studies that claim most technical and professional writing projects are collaborative. If you are a student, you have very likely participated in collaborative writing already, and if you are enrolled in WRIT 3562W at the University of Minnesota, you will complete some collaborative projects this semester. For each of these reasons, and because collaborative writing is increasingly present across industries, it’s important to consider how to best approach collaboration.

Collaboration can take place a variety of ways: you might collaborate with other writers on a group project, or you might collaborate through asking for feedback or revising an existing text. Or, collaboration might happen between you and your reader/client/target audience through direct feedback, usability testing, or conversations. Finally, you might even come to understand any writing that relies on previous research as collaborative: you are building off the work of others and using what they have done in your own researched projects.

Collaborative writing means working with someone else to create a text. However, collaboration might not always “look” the same, and you can even be the sole author of a text while still engaging in a collaborative process by asking for feedback or relying on previous work and research. It’s important to recognize the various ways in which technical communication is nearly always collaborative.

So much of technical and professional communication happens collaboratively, and this section focuses on specific strategies and approaches to effectively working with a team in order to create cohesive collaborative texts. According to Bill Siemers, a content strategist for Facebook:

Writing has to be collaborative. I often see my role as helping my product team pick the right words—this involves generating ideas with my product team, listening to different perspectives, and soliciting feedback on my work. While I’m ultimately responsible for the words that go into my product, the words are part of the product, and everyone owns the product together. I need to be collaborative in order to do my job.

Along with emphasizing the need for collaboration and helping you to strategize effective ways to collaborate, this section also addresses the ways in which collaboration is rhetorical and frames collaboration as engaged with social justice and as concerned with diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Collaboration, rhetoric, and social justice

When working as a team, it is so important to consider diversity, equity, and inclusion. Just as we’ve discussed in previous sections, language is shaped by experience, culture, world views, and values, AND at the same time, language shapes each of these things. Collaboration is one way to focus on equity and inclusion, but it is important to consider how collaborative teams are set up, and how they can work towards diversity and inclusion.

Some of the most obvious benefits of collaboration include a better finished product and a more thorough, rigorous process. When you work with someone else to create a text, you invite in another set of world views, of experience, of skills, of expertise; you invite another perspective to your own writing. Feedback on your course paper from your instructor or your classmates is helpful because different perspectives can recognize things (such as mistakes, or the need for more clarification, of the most useful or interesting findings) that you cannot always see on your own. Likewise, when you collaborate with others on a piece of technical communication, that text benefits from having multiple perspectives. Hopefully, in the best of cases, you also learn and grow as a writer when you work collaboratively.

Most folks already recognize the role that collaboration plays in creating a better product. A less obvious benefit of collaboration is the role that collaboration can play in developing a community. Collaboration has the potential to create a rich, supportive community through the process of developing a collaborative text. Community is formed through collaboration when members of a collaborative project work together, listen to each other, and are able to feel included and valued as members of this community. Developing a community is such an important thing for technical communicators.

Community–especially a community made up of individuals from different backgrounds, with different experiences and world views, and with different expertise or knowledge sets–makes communication a less isolating task. Community can lead to a “better” product because that product is more nuanced and enriched by a variety of voices. More importantly, community allows technical communicators to ask for help, to ask for input, and to remember that communication is social. With a community of writers to offer feedback or a different perspective, communicators and more easily get a sense of how their audience might receive a text. A community of diverse communicators enables technical communication to be more inclusive, since texts are created not just with different audiences in mind, but by different communicators. 

There are so many benefits of developing a community and working collaboratively. Consider how much you learn from others, and how much more difficult it is to learn or do something in isolation. Community members can offer and ask for help, and can bring different perspectives in order to achieve a shared goal and to reach an intended audience. However, working collaboratively can also be challenging, and not every collaborative project will automatically lead to a supportive community. In order to use collaboration as a way to develop a community, technical communicators must be intentional about that goal. They must be willing to lead and to listen, and they must be open to feedback, especially when that feedback challenges their own ways of thinking and moving through the world.

In order to enjoy the benefits of collaboration, such as community, a better product, and increased opportunity for inclusion, technical communicators must learn to navigate various challenges. Some of the most obvious challenges of collaboration include managing team dynamics and dealing with potential conflict. It can be challenging to navigate different personalities, work styles, communication styles, and even distinct opinions and areas of expertise. However, if you do some planning during the early stages of collaboration, many of these challenges can be met and resolved. Below, you’ll find potential steps for establishing a communication and work flow plan, and for handling potential conflict. Use these steps as guidelines, and adjust them to the needs of your specific project, context, and team.

Steps for collaboration

The 5 basic steps that can making collaboration run much more smoothly are as follows:

Step 1: Getting to know your team

Step 2: Establishing communication practices

Step 3: Developing a project timeline

Step 4: Assigning team roles and responsibilities

Step 5: Outlining potential conflicts and resolution plans

Again, these steps are not “written in stone”; rather, consider them as flexible guidelines. Generally, the more planning you do at the beginning of a project, the more smoothly that project will go. So, establish things like your timeline, roles, and conflict resolution plans during your first team meeting. Without these early conversations, it’s much more likely that your team will run into problems down the line.

Step 1: Getting to know your team

The first–and perhaps most obvious–step in working collaboratively is getting to know your team. So, during a first team meeting, take a little time to learn something about the folks you’ll be collaborating with. You don’t need to share personal information: rather, consider what types of things might impact a team dynamic or the specific project. It’s useful to know what types of expertise and experience each member brings to the team. It’s also important to know about schedules and preferred work patterns and means of communication.

Some questions you might address:

• How comfortable are you with this project?
• Are there specific aspects of the project that are of particular interest to you?
• What does your schedule look like, both day-to-day and over the course of the project (short and long term)?
• Is there anything regarding this project that you are particularly wary of, or that might be most difficult to navigate?
• When you’ve worked collaboratively in the past, what has worked well?
• What do you consider your biggest strengths as a writer (researcher, designer, project manager, etc.)?

Step 2: Establishing communication practices

Once you have spent a little time getting to know each other, establish how you’ll do most of your communicating for this project. It’s important to establish your group communication practices and set some guidelines so that, should something come up later during the project, you know the best way to contact each other, and you’ll already have these guidelines in place.

Because so much work–and collaboration–happens remotely, it is especially important to establish these guidelines and practices for team communication. Along with communication guidelines, consider what tools you will use both to communicate and to compose and organize your work. Perhaps your team will work in person, or perhaps you will have some in person meetings and do most of your composing online in a shared document. Or perhaps you will only meet online over a video conferencing software, or you’ll divide up the responsibilities and complete most of the project asynchronously.

Some questions to consider as you establish your communication practices:

• What mode of communication should we use to schedule meetings and to contact each other (text, email, phone call, calendar invites, slack, etc.)?
• If we need to get ahold of someone in the group for an emergency, what is the best way to do that (text, phone call, email, etc.)?
• After we’ve reached out to someone, how long should we allow for a response (should we commit to responding to messages within 24 hours? 48 hours?)?
• When we contact one person, should we contact the entire team? Is there a particular chain of communication or one person who can handle questions, schedule changes, etc?
• If someone does not respond to the agreed upon communication channel in the agreed upon timeframe, what are the next steps? (this question will also be addressed when you plan for potential conflicts)

Addressing these questions is just a starting point. Consider why communication is such an important part about working collaboratively. When asked why they most dislike about group projects, students often respond that it’s difficult when some group members don’t “pull their weight” or when not all group members are “on the same page” about the project. Effective communication can address and curtail these concerns, for the most part. Communicating about your approach to communication helps to ensure a smooth collaboration.

Step 3: Developing a project plan and timeline

Once you have determined how you will communicate and what the communication expectations of each group or team member include, you can begin to develop a project plan and timeline. Of course, in order to do this work, you must assess the rhetorical situation and establish what your project is. Consider the following things when putting your project plan together:

• What is your main goal or purpose? What is it that you are trying to accomplish?
• Who is the target or intended audience? What are their needs and expectations?
• What is the context of this project (how much time do you have to complete it? What kinds of guidelines were you given? What is the general context of your organization/company/location/culture etc.?)?
• What major steps need to be taken in order to complete the project?
• What minor steps need to be taken in order to complete each major step?
• How can you assess the project as you go?

There are many ways to create a project plan; once you have a general sense of what you need to do and how you will do it, create a timeline for your project. Start with the end: when does your project need to be completed? From there, work backwards and establish various internal deadlines. If this project is due in 4 weeks, then when should the first draft be completed? When should you have finished collecting your data? The more detailed your timeline, the better you may be able to stay on task. It’s helpful to create a visual for your timeline, and to utilize calendar software to help your team meet each deadline.

Step 4: Assigning team roles and responsibilities

Another useful step, once you have a project plan in place, is to assign team members to specific roles, tasks, and responsibilities.

Some examples of assigned roles might be:

• Researcher
  • a researcher (or researchers) might be in charge of finding and summarizing appropriate sources
  • researchers might also work as “fact checkers” or design surveys or other ways to collect data
• Editor
  • the editor could be in charge of putting all the content together
  • editors might be responsible for things like smooth transitions, clear language, correct content, etc.
• Designer
  • the designer might focus on document design, organization, and use of images and graphics
  • the designer can pay close attention to the layout and how things fit together visually
• Reviewer
  • a reviewer might be in charge of reading through the entire document or sections of a document
  • reviewers can fact-check or double-check any research, claims, data; a reviewer might also pay attention to “flow” or organization and clarity

You can assign specific roles based on the content you want to create. You could also assign roles like “scheduler” or “contact person” to make sure that someone keeps track of the rest of the team and keeps you on your timeline. It is important, when collaborating on a technical communication project, not to assign one person to the role of “writer”; everyone working on the collaborative team should help to create content.

The suggested roles above are just examples. You should create the necessary roles for your project as a team, based on your needs!

Step 5: Outlining potential conflicts and resolution plans

Finally, an important part of your early planning should include articulating potential conflicts and your plans or approaches for conflict resolution. Try to brainstorm, with your group, a list of potential likely conflicts. Some easy examples are how you might handle a communication breakdown, or what your process should be for dealing with an uncommunicative group member. Or, consider what process you’ll use if you disagree about how to proceed with an idea or about content or design. Thinking about potential conflicts before they arise means that you can be better prepared to face and resolve them together.

Once you have your “conflict list,” decide how you can best resolve them. If someone misses a deadline, can you offer a 24-hour grace period? Can you have someone in charge of sending reminders or reaching out to that member? Coming up with these plans together will help you to create a sense of community and shared responsibility and will allow you to better work together on your project. And, coming up with potential conflict resolutions will allow you to move quickly through conflicts and focus on your collaborative work.

In sum, collaborative writing is a crucial part of technical communication, and most technical and professional communicators work collaboratively. Learning to work effectively with a team also involves practicing communication, and focusing on the specific context, goals, and needs of your team members. Planning at the start of a project, and considering the best ways to communicate, can go a long way in avoiding major roadblocks. Finally, collaboration can contribute towards diversity, equity, and inclusion when a team is intentional about including different voices. Good collaboration also means listening and making equity and inclusion (which you can read more about in section 3) central to your team’s values and goals.