Workflow for Collaboration
Collaboration is not a simple process. It’s certainly not always natural, but over time, through working with different kinds of people, it becomes more intuitive.
This write-up briefly describes how I choose to collaborate with others.
My process is by no means the best—it’s simply what works for me. At the end of the day, if you have a process that yields good results, you shouldn't feel pressured to change it.
Collaboration is essentially about communicating your thoughts in a clear and concise manner while leaving room for modification based on others’ input.
How should you start communicating?
To initiate a discussion with someone, you first need to establish context. The context should be comprehensive enough for a reasonable newcomer to understand.
The best way to create this context is through a text document, as it allows collaborators to read and revisit the information at their own pace. Most importantly, it’s convenient. Writing and sharing a text document is relatively simple compared to other methods. Additionally, a well-prepared document encourages asynchronous work.
The next step is discussion based on the shared context. This discussion will bring new insights, making some of the original context outdated while introducing new ideas that should be incorporated. You should update the document accordingly, preserving all relevant information. Any changes resulting from the discussion should be tracked, and a history of these modifications should be maintained.
The final step is to define a clear set of tasks that will conclude the context and discussion.
The Most Important Step: Discipline
There’s one more step that must be present throughout the entire process: discipline. It’s easy to get ahead of ourselves and resort to quick, half-baked communication for immediate responses. However, that approach is rarely effective. Developing discipline in collaboration takes time, just like any other habit.
Tools
I’ve grown fond of Notion because it offers many of the features I need. Most importantly, it makes editing text and discussing specific parts of a document convenient.
I also want to experiment with using a GitHub repository for storing documents and enabling discussions through comments on specific commits. I’ll share my thoughts on that workflow once I’ve had enough experience with it.