"The natural unit of written collaboration"

Every now and then a phrase comes across the screen that causes a pause. Craig Randall asks this question on his blog: "What is the natural unit of written collaboration? Is it the paragraph, the section, the chapter, the document, the slide?"

For a software architect, which Randall is, the question has technical implications. They have to consider what's being collaborated on, how many people will touch it, how changes will be "versioned," and a ton of other small choices that must be made before there's software. It's got me thinking about something different, as I don't think in terms of these "units," but rather in terms of "ideas." Aren't those the natural units of collaboration? I'm sure I'm missing something.

Comments

[e-Patient Dave]

Ah, what a splendid question. This is how writers and editors get into big tussles about how much editing is appropriate. "Hey, you're only supposed to be editing my grammar - what are you doing saying I worded the whole idea wrong??"

I say all the different levels exist, and to me the key is that any amount of collaboration involves sharing responsibility as well as authority - and as with any healthy relationship, it works to be clear about boundaries and to communicate honestly about what you think is a transgression.

Like, "Please look for typos" or "Does this sentence make sense?" or "Is the idea in chapter 3 laid out clearly?" or "Should I just ditch this whole book?"

I've worked on book editing projects that started at clarifying sentences and paragraphs, and in partnership with the author we ended up restructuring the whole book.

[jessica lipnack]

I agree, e-Patient Dave. It's awful when someone asks for help with a piece and then when you provide it, they flip out. Being clear helps, of course ("just a quick skim for whether this makes sense") but so does the recipient of the help being open.

[Danny]

The natural unit of collaboration is the idea. This is correct. In fact, the nascent field of Collaboration Engineering is built around the idea.

Consider the patterns of how collaborative teams do with ideas:

Generation is: "Moving from having fewer to having more ideas in the pool of ideas shared by the team."

Reduction is: "Moving from having many ides to a focus on fewer ideas that the team deems worthy of further attention."

Clarification is: "Moving from having less to having more shared understanding of ideas and of the words and phrases used to
express them."

Organization is: "Moving from less to more understanding of the relationships among concepts the group is considering."

Evaluation is: "Move from less to more understanding of the relative value of the ideas under consideration."

Commitment is: "Moving from having fewer to having more group members who are willing to commit to a proposal (a configuration of ideas and actions about them)."

If you take a look at

Briggs, Kolfschoten, de Vreede, and Dean, "Defining Key Concepts for Collaboration Engineering,"
Proceedings of the Twelfth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Acapulco, Mexico August 04th-06th 2006

you will find the classification of patterns of team interaction is further broken down into sub-categories of these six. All in all, it is the beginning of a typology for understanding how team create and process ideas.

It is very interesting stuff.

[Rich]

I'm not sure ideas are a natural "unit" of collaboration. Ideas can lead to collaboration or can simply be the focus of a collaborative event or project(ideation, sharing and commenting on ideas, innovation, etc..). Ideas, in effect, are simply a form of the broader theme of "content".

So content (be it files, discussions, blogs, Q&A, wikis, etc..) is really the first natural unit of collaboration.

Second, people are a natural unit. Collaboration being the interaction between 2 or more people.

A third natural unit of collaboration is the "Degree of Openness" or lack there of. Openness in the form of the internet (the whole community thing) is great -- but the reality is businesses need secure collaboration and secure communities to protect IP and maintain whatever competitive advantage they have. And communities tend to be less secure the more people involved.

The final unit of collaboration is time. Is it a project with a beginning and end, an ongoing project/event/business process.

Content, People, Degree of Openness, and Time -- there maybe more -- but these 4 are the "units" of collaboration that come to my mind.

[jessica lipnack]

Excellent, Rich. Thanks. So, "content" seems like the vehicle that delivers "ideas," which makes me think they're different aspects of same thing. People, I get that clearly: people are units that collaborate with the content. They do it with varying degrees of openness; same can be said about their organizations and their technology, more or less open. And all happens at a particular moment in time - from each person's perspective - sync, asynch; process time; and real calendar time.

We use a four-part model for teams, networks, orgs - any way that people work together: People, Purpose, Links, Time. So two of each of our four categories is the same - People and Time ... Maybe "Content" is like Purpose and Degree of Openness is like Links.

Thanks so much. I'll try to pull Danny (comment before yours) and e-Patient Dave back in.

[e-Patient Dave (deBronkart)]

So, I think we've diverged from the original question. The new discipline of collaboration engineering seems fascinating (and reallllly deep), and I can see how Forrester would consider it dig-worthy (that's dig with one g).

But we were talking about writing, and the *unit* of collaboration.

Danny mentioned *patterns* of how ideas evolve: generation, clarification, etc. Really good - but it doesn't address the *unit* of what's being collaborated on.

I don't get Rich's points at all. Rich, I looked at your blog, and while "degree of openness" and "time" are certainly parameters that affect collaboration, I don't see how they're a unit of anything. Besides, the original question was "paragraph, chapter, document?"

Jessica's four-part model seems the same to me - a fine model, but not answering the original question.

So, Jessica, if you wanna change what the discussion's about, that's fine, but I want to change the title of the seminar. :)

As for the level of nitty detail, believe me, having sat in on development of software standards: collaboration in all its glory and complexity can take place (and require skilled management) right down to the level of word.

It's messy: collaboration on ideas (the unit) can happen at all the levels in the original question. And it can derail at any of those levels.

In all this what interests me most is the patterns Danny described. That's new to me.

Anybody care to offer *definitions* of collaboration?