Collaborative Strategies for Distributed Teams: Innovation Through Interlaced Collaborative Writing

Published in 2016 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference Proceedings

This paper discusses a case history of a successful, highly-productive team that collaborates on a regular basis, solely through virtual means. In the article, we will discuss the importance of psychological safety as a key foundation in collaborative work and the affordances that result from building and maintaining this foundation, including the co-creation of knowledge and an increase in team productivity. We provide a postmortem of our collaborative writing process, which has resulted in a series of successful articles, presentations, and posters. In this case history, we will discuss our collaborative processes, highlighting significant decisions, choices, and failures; we will supplement the case with anecdotal evidence. Finally, we will provide a set of concrete strategies/guidelines to benefit others interested in distributed collaboration. Ultimately, we present this case as a model for collaborative writing and have termed this innovative process “interlaced collaborative writing”.