Collaboration 101: How Old School Processes Prohibit Us From Working as a Team
Editor’s Note: This was the feature article in this month’s TechCom Manager newsletter, reprinted here with permission. Click the previous link to subscribe to the newsletter.
Scott Abel
No matter where you look these days, some vendors are touting how their new software products can help technical documentation departments magically “collaborate” their way to tremendous savings. You may be considering a purchase of one of these collaborative authoring tools. If you are, be forewarned that your return on investment may not be as spectacular as anticipated.
It’s not that there aren’t tremendous savings to gain by working in a collaborative manner. There are software products that can help your documentation group work more efficiently, making it possible for you to save significant time and resources. The real problem is closer to home. And it actually has nothing at all to do with software.
The real problem is that most technical documentation groups do not work as a team. Just because you co-locate a group of people in one big room, or somehow join them together under a common departmental umbrella, does not make them a team. Not even close.
