Creative Collaboration

I searched the web for a succinct summary of how to do creative collaboration, and many articles addressed the subject in parts. They often went in depth regarding the team, the process, or the tools. Here, I put together my notes.

Team

No team is perfect, but here are some key characteristics of successful teams:

• Has a history together or shared motivation that keeps them united when the going gets tough.
• Agrees to leave personal ego at the door. Instead of “Listen to me because I make the best decisions.” try “How can we merge our ideas?”
• Agrees to avoid personal attacks (i.e. “You’re unqualified. You’re stupid. You don’t get it.”).
• Agrees to a structure with roles, whether hierarchical or peer to peer.
• Chooses a process and a set of tools and agrees to use them throughout.

Process

The process should include one or more time frames for each of the following:

• Defining high level objectives, criteria for success, and deadlines.
• Individual research, day dreaming and deliberation.
• All parties are given a chance to express their ideas, which should be recorded.
• Open critique of ideas, focusing on the promotion of ideas that achieve objectives and satisfy constraints over those that do not.
• Practicing group synthesis (working together on an unfinished product).
• Tests and checks, which result in either validation or contingency plans.

Tools

Some projects do not require sophisticated tools, but others do. Here are some features to think about:

• Do you need to store text, images, structured data?
• The simplest structure is a list, then a tree, and the most general structure is a linked network.
• A revision or rollback feature is the key to refining and organizing intermediate results, because nothing will be lost. Google provides some of the most widely accessible free tools with this feature.
• A system for meta comments and ratings can be helpful if there are many collaborators or customers to provide feedback.