Ideally, document collaboration should be as long as it takes to turn a document into a collaborative document that almost reaches the "perfect" feature. Well, unfortunately, we're not living in an ideal fairytale world.
"As soon as possible" seems to be one of the favorite business expressions. In a document collaboration related situation, this transforms in: "as short as possible".
Of course, you would like a short, real-time document collaboration but with all the benefits you can get from such a project.
The problem is: how can you keep it short and still get the results you were hoping?
- First of all, you have to clearly let your document collaboration members known what you want from them, what they should follow in their review. You surely don't want to receive a number of emails asking for details you forgot to mention.
Or, even a darker scenario, adding some more unwanted time to your document workflow: you receive the feedback messages and discover that your colleagues did not understand what you want. So, you send them a clarification message and, again, wait for their answer, hoping that, this time, they got it right.
Let them know, again clearly, what is the deadline of the document collaboration project. Of course, you should consider "the bad scenario" case and shorten the deadline with a few days, without telling your online document collaboration companions this aspect. It is your duty, as a project manager to make sure you will be able to respect the final deadline.
The length of the document collaboration will also depend on the method you decide to use. If you go for the traditional system: sending the document by email, waiting for the feedback, making the suggested modifications, sending the final collaborative document for another review.
This method is surely a time eater one. So, you have to find ways to be more efficient. An online collaboration tool, like Agilewords, is a perfect start on that road. It is free, so you can test it right now.
Long document collaboration, based on many email messages, is not a good solution anymore. Discover real-time document collaboration!
