Document collaboration: types of feedback

Collecting feedback on a document can be a difficult job, especially if you have to work with a big document collaboration team. Generally, if you want to collect feedback, you:

• Send emails and expect feedback replies. Well, here is where the problems may appear. One of your document collaboration companions may forget to use the "Track Changes" option and this will transform it in a problematic feedback for you, as the author, because you have to find the changes he made by comparing your version with his...unpleasant and time-consuming job, right?

Well, the nightmare is not over yet. Another online document collaborator prefers to give his feedback by writing directly in the body of the email and, again, you have to search in the collaborative document the elements he refers to.

• Send emails and get feedback over the phone, in a post-it, or in another "innovative" way. Well, you didn't think it can get even worse than the first option, right? A document collaboration process is full of surprises.


• Use a special service for document collaboration. Especially if you choose an online document collaboration tool, you can avoid the difficulties of collecting feedback.

So, now you have the feedback you needed for your collaborative document. Obviously, the problems are not over. Now, you have to see the types of feedback you received.

• Evaluative. Analyzes the collaborative document as a whole, not punctually, and gives general suggestions for its improvement. It can be negative or positive.

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• Interpretive. It is a deeper feedback, requesting the focus of reviewer.

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• Supportive. The document collaboration member seeks to support the author of the document in some way. Still, some criticism may be involved in order to make sure the document will be improved.

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• Probing. The collaborator asks deeper questions in order to find specific information and to provide a better feedback.

Well, of course, the most difficult feedback will be the one that doesn't say exactly what the problem is and you will have to send some explanatory questions to your document collaboration companions.

Or, even worse, the ones that are in conflict with the feedback received from other collaborators. There's a big need of communication there.