Team solutions #1: Text development

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Oct 30, 2011 at 07:49 AM

Thanks to everyone who sent suggestions. Funnily enough, this discussion ties in well with another thread I myself had started two years ago “Breaking down a large Word document for sharing” http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/1370/10

The issue I then had was more specific, but in principle it remains the same: what is the most convenient way to work on a large and complex document with several collaborators, giving them easy access to the specific chapters that interest them, while still maintaining an overview? This is very similar to Jose’s requirement for a notetaker using the file system for individual info items here http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3166/0/notetaker-that-uses-the-filesystem-and-has-powerful-search

My conclusion following the two threads and some experimenting, is that there are two ways to go:

(1) Use a tool providing collaboration features and including the full content. Onenote with Skydrive or Sharepoint seems to be the most mature solutions in this area. Free/open source alternatives include wikis, Wordpress and possibly more specialised tools like Scenari http://scenari-platform.org

(2) “Render unto caesar what is caesar’s” by using a tool for the overview and another for the broken-down content. This was the solution that I chose the previous time, in a way similar to Jose’s. I still believe that this approach has its benefits, the main one being that collaborators don’t need to learn a completely new tool, as they will do their editing in Word or Google Docs (though it will probably have to be one or the other if they share chapters among them). The individual documents would be hosted in Dropbox, Wuala or similar synchronised storage.

For the overview, an online tool like MindMeister/Mind42 or the excellent MyInfo website export should prove intuitive enough for most. The former would be preferable if collaboration is required on the actual outline, whereas the latter would be read/only (for everyone but the project manager).