Collaborative authoring
by George Lewis
by George Lewis
Collaborative authoring is a method of producing content using more than one author. Collaborative authoring enables content to be created more quickly, with better quality and provides a more flexible and resilient process.
There are several strategies when using multiple authors. The most common of these are:
However, each of these approaches requires individual authors to work on their own specialist content. Therefore, these still provide a bottleneck at each author and a single point of failure for the process. To realise the benefits of collaborative authoring, a hybrid approach is required. In such an approach authors are able to work on any part of the document in parallel to other authors and, therefore, provide a resilient process.
Content production processes that use collaborative authoring realise the following benefits:
To achieve the benefits of collaborative authoring, technical authoring teams face the following key challenges:
To overcome the challenges of collaborative authoring and achieve the benefits, technical authoring teams need to focus on the following:
There are many tools available that enable collaborative authoring. When selecting tools for a collaborative authoring process, it is important to ensure that you have the following capabilities:
Content production is a part of an overall system, for example, product development, so content production needs to be resilient or it will hold up the rest of the process. By having multiple, skilled authors collaborating on creating content not only improves the quality but also provides a quicker, resilient and flexible process.
George works as 3di’s Service Delivery Director. Passionate about helping each individual team member reach their full potential. Outside of work George can be found cycling, reading books on business and psychology, as well as taking the odd trip to Spain or Germany.