Author! Author! Author! - Effective Collaborative Writing

The recent news report about Sergey Brin using Google Buzz to collaborate on his recent New York Times Op Ed article got me thinking about collaborative writing and what it takes to make it work.

In its simplest form collaborative writing is a work product with multiple authors. Success means the collaboration achieves the communication objectives and all the authors are all willing to sign their names to the work. Simple in theory; difficult in practice.

As I think back on my experiences my best successes were based on three principles:

• Common vision for the document.   We all had the same view of what success looked like. This helped answer the question "how we would know we were done", other than simply running out of time.   That helps avoid writing 50 drafts, having one author take over the project in desperation, or publishing minority reports.
• Clear roles and ground rules. Sometimes we had to discuss them up front, and sometimes they already existed based on past collaborations.
• Suspended pride of authorship.  My best collaborations have been with good writers who know their skills, but put them aside (temporarily) for the greater good. It requires a thick skin to watch another author rewrite the work or delete the entire section.

Collaborative writing follows the same 4Ps of Collaboration in general - purpose, people, process and place.  The best approach to effective collaborative writing is:

1. Agree on roles (People). Who on the team will liaise with the sponsor, do the research, write the first draft, contribute, or have final edit?   How do these roles affect which authors get listed in the byline, get listed at the end, receive mention in the acknowledgements -- and in what order?
2. Determine the document strategy (Purpose):
   • How long is the intended document and in what form (graphics and text mix)?
   • What is the main message or theme?
   • What is the desired tone: Descriptive or provocative? Serious or light?  Technical or mainstream?
3. Lay out timetable and deadlines (Process). This is especially necessary when there is a fixed publication or presentation date.   Work backward to establish realistic milestones.
4. Write high level outline (Process) --  less than one page. Too many teams jump into writing the final document right off, thinking they will same time, but learn too late they all had different views on the structure. And it is far easier to critique and edit another person's outline (even with suspended pride of authorship) than to edit "final" versions.
5. Write full draft and post for commenting, additions, and edits (Process, Place). Here is where collaborative tools such as Google Docs or wikis can be useful because they support simultaneous editing, they track changes to enable the team to roll back to an earlier version, they allow for robust commenting and give-and-take discussions.
6. Write the final version (Process). If all goes well the authors will be in alignment and the "final edit" author will be able to make the finishing touches.
7. Acknowledge the Contributors (People).  This writing activity might have taken place over many months, and the early contributors may not be aware of the eventual publication.  It is good practice for the sponsor or organizer to share the final publication and thank all the contributors.  That sets the stage for successful collaboration the next time there is a need.

 What are your ground rules and experiences for collaborative writing?

Update on 25 December 2010 by Lokesh Datta

See Related Posts:

• Organizing the UI for a Wiki - Finding the right balance
• Effective Collaboration is Supposed to Look "Messy"!
• Even the U.S. State Department Now Uses Wikis
• Editing Tools for Collaboration

Comments

[Lokesh Datta]

I posted this question on LinkedIn: What are the best practices in collaborative writing? What are the critical elements for success?

I received interesting responses that I would like to share.

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Bernard Gore, Programme and Project Management Consultant

In my experience it's most important to agree how you will work together - and that's often a matter of personality and relationship, not something that has much "best practice". For some it's necessary to split sections of the work up and work on these separately, others can just sit together and bounce ideas back and forth, with either getting them written.
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Phil Atkinson, Change Maker & OD Facilitator

Someone has to take the lead and create a first draft after agreeing objectives, outcomes, tone, structure, audience reactions to the text. I write articles for Management Journals some of which are jointly created. Again collaboration does not mean creating the piece sharing the same keyboard. The more planning the better. The same stands for writing proposals. Always someone should take the lead.

When writing Copy I interview the client very specifically about the tone and intention - and what the audience should be thinking after reading the article.

See: http://www.philipatkinsonconsulting.com/comms_strategy_copywriting.asp
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Guy Benchimol, Technical writer

I should say as Phil that you must build a team with a leader who coordinates the work -he sometimes is called an Editor-.

I agree too with Bernard to advice to split the work into Chapters or Sections.

Now, me thinks you have to organize three stages:

1. Once the topic is defined, you will set up, let us say every fortnight, meetings of the team in order to discuss about the topic and enlighten its different views; at the end of this cycle, after perhaps six months, people will be rather well acquainted one with another and the leader will be able to distribute the tasks, one, two or three people taking under their responsibility a section of the work. At this time, if you have to contract with a publisher, the name of authors will be registered so that it could appear at the head of each chapter.

2. After one month, a new kind of meetings will take place, letting each group explaining what he did during the precedent period; this may happen every month during a duration depending on the importance of the work.

3. At the end, the leader rewrites if need the whole work and diffuses it to the team for rewiew; his name will follow the mention "under the direction of..." or precedes "...editor" after the title.

Collaborative writing is not an easy task because, especially when the number of participants is great, it is difficult to obtain a consensus: this requires a good leader!
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Wallace Jackson, Multimedia Producer and i3D Programmer for Acrobat 3D PDF, JavaFX, Mobile & Virtual Worlds

Xwiki Java-Based Open Source Wiki is your solution for private collaborative writing.
See: http://www.Xwiki.org , http://www.WallaceJackson.com, http://www.MountainForest.com

[Lokesh Datta]

I received wonderful feedback on Collaborative Writing in the LinkedIn discussion group, MANAGEMENT Tools. This group is managed by Guy Benchimol, Technical writer. Many thanks to Guy for his insightful comments!

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By Guy Benchimol, Technical writer

Your 4P points of views (People, Purposes, Process, Place) are a good guideline. It may be experimented indeed when writing a work with several authors.

This lead to organize three stages:

- once the topic is defined, you will set up, let us say every fortnight, meetings of the team in order to discuss about the topic and enlighten its different views; at the end of this cycle, after perhaps six months, people will be rather well acquainted one with another and the leader will be able to distribute the tasks, one, two or three people taking under their responsibility a section of the work. At this time, if you have to contract with a pubisher, the name of authors will be registred so that it could appear at the head of each chapter.

-after one month, a new kind of meetings will take place, letting each group explaining what he did during the precedent period; this may happen every month during a duration depending on the importance of the work.

- at the end, the leader rewrites if need the whole work and diffuses it to the team for rewiew; his name will follow the mention "under the direction of..." or precedes "...editor" after the title.

Perhaps, you could add a fifth "P" as "Period" because, as you can see, calendar plays a paramount role for letting behaviours adapt one another.

Collaborative writing is not an easy task because, especially when the number of participants is great, it is difficult to obtain a consensus: this requires a good leader; logically, he is the person who initiates the project.