Many of us who collaborate a great deal find it difficult to measure or even describe successful collaboration.  A commentator on a podcast (thanks Matt Cutts on TWIG) asserted that collaboration is really about iteration.  That stimulates some interesting new thinking.

Unfortunately, the classic definition of iteration is "to do something over and over again".  But in most common usage the implication is to do something over and over again to make it better than the last round.  This has tremendous applicability to successful collaboration.  In too many cases, collaboration means simply sharing data amongst the team.  That is fine, and better than completely individual work, but can still result in the equivalent of everyone talking and no one listening.

Iteration in the context of collaboration suggests that the team members have processed an idea or solution, have run it through the team mill several times, and have made it better with each turn.  That suggests real collaboration.  It is the difference between someone posting a document or wiki that attracts a handful of comments, versus having the team members weigh in with new content, bold in-line comments, and major edit suggestions.  In the former case there is some benefit from collaboration, but the iteration in the second case usually yields far better work and stronger buy-in in support of a project result.

Think about your last collaboration project.  Was there a good amount of sharing?  Or did you experience iteration, building more layers on top of an idea or solution?