Team Writing

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Authors

Joanna Wolfe

Joanna Wolfe (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is Director of the Global Communication Center at Carnegie Mellon University, where she develops new methods for improving communication instruction across the university. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles on teamwork, gender studies, collaborative learning technology , technical writing, and rhetoric Her research on collaborative writing in technical communication classes won the 2006 NCTE award for best article reporting qualitative or quantitative research in technical and scientific communication.

Chris Lam

Chris Lam is an associate professor of technical communication at the University of North Texas. He studies communication in team projects and examines the literature on professional and technical communication and its impact on the profession.

Chapter 1: Planning Your Collaboration

Case study: The audit report team – A case study of misaligned expectations

Exercise 1.1: Analysis of the audit report team, Original scenario

Effective teams maximize productive conflict and minimize unproductive conflict

An alternate reality: the audit report team redux

Exercise 1.2: Analysis of the alternate reality

Effective planning for a written document involves three main components

1. Agree upon goals and deliverables
2. Identify and merge competing goals, values, and expectations

For Discussion: Competing goals, values, and expectations on the audit report team

3. Create processes and timelines that allow for substantive revision

Different stages of the project involve different types of collaboration

For Discussion: Collaboration types on the audit report team

Effective project management holds the different stages of collaboration together

Teams need to select from different families of tools

Exercise 1.3: Tools and Processes on the audit report team

Virtual teams have unique challenges

Summary

Exercise 1.4: Identifying competing priorities

Chapter 2: What Makes a Good Team?

Successful teams have high collective intelligence

Exercise 2.1: Reflect on your previous team experiences

Diverse teams have high potential, but require extra effort

Collective intelligence increases with equal participation

Equal speaking time
Equal information-sharing

For Discussion: Identifying unique perspectives on your team

Proportionate contributions

For Discussion: Participation on the audit report team

Successful teams have high psychological safety

Create psychological safety on your team

Practice active listening
Avoid complaining; set a positive tone
Create judgment-free zones where even mistakes are appreciated
Treat mistakes as learning opportunities
Seek out difference
Communicate about things that have nothing to do with work

Exercise 2.2: Psychological safety on the audit report team
Exercise 2.3: Creating psychological safety on Victoria’s team

Use positive, future-focused statements

Exercise 2.4: Positive, future-focused statements

Successful and psychologically safe teams are data-driven

Summary

Exercise 2.5: Analyzing your conflict management style

Chapter 3: Project Management

Exercise 3.1: Reflect on project management of a previous project
Projects can be managed to have more or less iteration of the phases
Exercise 3.2: Evaluating project management styles
Exercise 3.3: Selecting a project management style for your project

The project manager’s role at each project phase

The initiation phase

Define the project scope in a scope statement

Exercise 3.4: Draft a project scope statement

Understand the team in a team charter

Planning phases: Create and update the task schedule
Implementation phases

Monitor progress with regular check-ins

For Discussion: Sharing obstacles

Troubleshoot obstacles and team problems with early intervention
Notify stakeholders of obstacles by asking for advice

Assessment phases

Review the work and plan the next phase
Review team processes with informal surveys
Review team processes with organic data from the project

Callout: Accessing Document Revision Histories

Case Study: Is the problem individual contribution or something else?

Exercise 3.5: Collecting team data
The closing phase

Summary

Chapter 4: Getting Started with a Team Charter

A team charter records norms, processes, and roles

Sample team charter
Different kinds of teams have different kinds of charters

Prepare for the team charter

Exercise 4.1: Preparing for the team charter

Meet to develop a team culture

Balance individual strengths and weaknesses
Balance commitment levels
Build consensus around revision norms
Exercise 4.2: Building consensus around revision norms
Build consensus around communication norms
Exercise 4.3: Analyzing media
Build consensus around timeliness norms
Exercise 4.4: Merging timeliness norms
Develop troubleshooting guidelines

Responding to violations of the team charter

Summary

Chapter 5: Getting Started with the Task Schedule

Identify Major Tasks

Exercise 5.1: Define tasks

Define project roles

Options for defining unique project roles
For Discussion: Expert vs. novice review
Determine criteria for each project role
For Discussion: Experience vs. Motivation to Learn
Exercise 5.2: Define project roles
Define roles by interest
Define roles by tool sets

Assign roles

Practice strategies for breaking stereotypical thinking

Systematically consider each criterion separately

Callout: What if one person is most qualified for multiple roles?

Assign consulting or back-up roles

Consider rotating roles

For Discussion: Assigning roles

Plan milestone and meeting dates

Plan meeting inputs and outputs in advance

Schedule and assign individual tasks

Balance the workload

Troubleshoot project dependencies

Adopt appropriate tools for maintaining task schedules

Exercise 5.3: Draft a task schedule

Summary

For Discussion: Comparing task schedules

Chapter 6: Writing and Revising Together

Agree upon where you are going: Define criteria up front

Finding and analyzing model texts
Exercise 6.1: Finding and analyzing model texts
Analyzing your audience(s)
Exercise 6.2: Analyzing your audiences
Planning for accessibility

Use straw drafts to jumpstart your collaboration

Exercise 6.3: Straw draft
For Discussion: Straw drafts

Decide upon composing tools and processes

1. The ability to avoid competing versions of the document
2. Formatting capabilities
3. Integration with special tools
4. Internet access issues
Exercise 6.4: Deciding upon composing tools and processes

Decide upon revision processes and tools

The feedback method
The direct-revision method
Choosing a method
For Discussion: Deciding upon review and revision tools and processes

Make substantive suggestions grounded in shared criteria

Review project criteria
Focus on global changes in the early stage of a draft
Focus on language and formatting changes in later stages
Exercise 6.5: Practicing positive, future-focused feedback

Assign a team member to do a final edit for consistency and accessibility

Summary

Chapter 7: Running Team Meetings

Determine the purpose and structure of the meeting

For Discussion: Structuring meetings

Prepare for the meeting

Prepare and circulate an agenda

Require homework and pre-reads

Conduct straw polls or surveys prior to the meeting

Exercise 7.1: Plan a meeting

Structure conversations to increase equal participation

Establish no interruption rules

Use criticism-free periods to generate ideas
Establish turn-taking rules to equalize discussion
Be systematic about making decisions
Use polling tools
Use screens to focus attention
For Discussion: Structured conversations

Have good group etiquette during the meeting

Use additional strategies for virtual meetings

For Discussion: Virtual meetings

Follow up after the meeting

Update the task schedule
Distribute meeting minutes
Callout: Action items in meeting minutes vs. Task schedules: What’s the difference?
Exercise 7.2: Analyzing meeting minutes

Summary

Exercise 7.3: Troubleshooting problematic team meetings

Chapter 8: Troubleshooting Team Problems

Decide who to involve
Pick the medium
For Discussion: Selecting meeting

Phrase the communication to focus on solutions

Callout: Address problems early
For recurring problems, work to discover root causes
For Discussion: Role-playing root cause analysis

Troubleshoot problems with showing up and turning in work

Problem: A teammate misses a meeting

Problem: A teammate turns in poor-quality work

Problem: Your initial efforts are unsuccessful

Troubleshooting problems with personal interactions

Problem: My team doesn’t trust me to do good work

Problem: My team isn’t listening to me

Problem: Other team members are not committed to a high-quality product

Problem: My teammates do and say things I find disturbing or demeaning

Problem: My teammates are not open to revisions to their work

Summary

Exercise 8.2: Troubleshooting

Appendix: Sample Meeting Minutes

Product Updates

Detailed case studies allow students to work through real-world examples and better understand the implications of their choices as writers and researchers.

Grounded in research, this volume provides evidence-based, classroom-tested coverage of this topic in greater depth than a survey text.

Flexible and affordable, this brief e-book is written in an accessible, friendly style and is affordably priced in order to supplement existing course materials or to serve as the core of a focused unit or course. Consider mixing and matching with one of the other volumes in The Bedford Series for Technical and Professional Communication: Writing with Focus, Clarity, and Precision; Writing Proposals; Writing about Data; and Team Writing, 2e. Volumes in the series are also available as part of The Bedford Bookshelf.

Authors

Joanna Wolfe

Joanna Wolfe (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is Director of the Global Communication Center at Carnegie Mellon University, where she develops new methods for improving communication instruction across the university. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles on teamwork, gender studies, collaborative learning technology , technical writing, and rhetoric Her research on collaborative writing in technical communication classes won the 2006 NCTE award for best article reporting qualitative or quantitative research in technical and scientific communication.

Chris Lam

Chris Lam is an associate professor of technical communication at the University of North Texas. He studies communication in team projects and examines the literature on professional and technical communication and its impact on the profession.

Chapter 1: Planning Your Collaboration

Case study: The audit report team – A case study of misaligned expectations

Exercise 1.1: Analysis of the audit report team, Original scenario

Effective teams maximize productive conflict and minimize unproductive conflict

An alternate reality: the audit report team redux

Exercise 1.2: Analysis of the alternate reality

Effective planning for a written document involves three main components

1. Agree upon goals and deliverables
2. Identify and merge competing goals, values, and expectations

For Discussion: Competing goals, values, and expectations on the audit report team

3. Create processes and timelines that allow for substantive revision

Different stages of the project involve different types of collaboration

For Discussion: Collaboration types on the audit report team

Effective project management holds the different stages of collaboration together

Teams need to select from different families of tools

Exercise 1.3: Tools and Processes on the audit report team

Virtual teams have unique challenges

Summary

Exercise 1.4: Identifying competing priorities

Chapter 2: What Makes a Good Team?

Successful teams have high collective intelligence

Exercise 2.1: Reflect on your previous team experiences

Diverse teams have high potential, but require extra effort

Collective intelligence increases with equal participation

Equal speaking time
Equal information-sharing

For Discussion: Identifying unique perspectives on your team

Proportionate contributions

For Discussion: Participation on the audit report team

Successful teams have high psychological safety

Create psychological safety on your team

Practice active listening
Avoid complaining; set a positive tone
Create judgment-free zones where even mistakes are appreciated
Treat mistakes as learning opportunities
Seek out difference
Communicate about things that have nothing to do with work

Exercise 2.2: Psychological safety on the audit report team
Exercise 2.3: Creating psychological safety on Victoria’s team

Use positive, future-focused statements

Exercise 2.4: Positive, future-focused statements

Successful and psychologically safe teams are data-driven

Summary

Exercise 2.5: Analyzing your conflict management style

Chapter 3: Project Management

Exercise 3.1: Reflect on project management of a previous project
Projects can be managed to have more or less iteration of the phases
Exercise 3.2: Evaluating project management styles
Exercise 3.3: Selecting a project management style for your project

The project manager’s role at each project phase

The initiation phase

Define the project scope in a scope statement

Exercise 3.4: Draft a project scope statement

Understand the team in a team charter

Planning phases: Create and update the task schedule
Implementation phases

Monitor progress with regular check-ins

For Discussion: Sharing obstacles

Troubleshoot obstacles and team problems with early intervention
Notify stakeholders of obstacles by asking for advice

Assessment phases

Review the work and plan the next phase
Review team processes with informal surveys
Review team processes with organic data from the project

Callout: Accessing Document Revision Histories

Case Study: Is the problem individual contribution or something else?

Exercise 3.5: Collecting team data
The closing phase

Summary

Chapter 4: Getting Started with a Team Charter

A team charter records norms, processes, and roles

Sample team charter
Different kinds of teams have different kinds of charters

Prepare for the team charter

Exercise 4.1: Preparing for the team charter

Meet to develop a team culture

Balance individual strengths and weaknesses
Balance commitment levels
Build consensus around revision norms
Exercise 4.2: Building consensus around revision norms
Build consensus around communication norms
Exercise 4.3: Analyzing media
Build consensus around timeliness norms
Exercise 4.4: Merging timeliness norms
Develop troubleshooting guidelines

Responding to violations of the team charter

Summary

Chapter 5: Getting Started with the Task Schedule

Identify Major Tasks

Exercise 5.1: Define tasks

Define project roles

Options for defining unique project roles
For Discussion: Expert vs. novice review
Determine criteria for each project role
For Discussion: Experience vs. Motivation to Learn
Exercise 5.2: Define project roles
Define roles by interest
Define roles by tool sets

Assign roles

Practice strategies for breaking stereotypical thinking

Systematically consider each criterion separately

Callout: What if one person is most qualified for multiple roles?

Assign consulting or back-up roles

Consider rotating roles

For Discussion: Assigning roles

Plan milestone and meeting dates

Plan meeting inputs and outputs in advance

Schedule and assign individual tasks

Balance the workload

Troubleshoot project dependencies

Adopt appropriate tools for maintaining task schedules

Exercise 5.3: Draft a task schedule

Summary

For Discussion: Comparing task schedules

Chapter 6: Writing and Revising Together

Agree upon where you are going: Define criteria up front

Finding and analyzing model texts
Exercise 6.1: Finding and analyzing model texts
Analyzing your audience(s)
Exercise 6.2: Analyzing your audiences
Planning for accessibility

Use straw drafts to jumpstart your collaboration

Exercise 6.3: Straw draft
For Discussion: Straw drafts

Decide upon composing tools and processes

1. The ability to avoid competing versions of the document
2. Formatting capabilities
3. Integration with special tools
4. Internet access issues
Exercise 6.4: Deciding upon composing tools and processes

Decide upon revision processes and tools

The feedback method
The direct-revision method
Choosing a method
For Discussion: Deciding upon review and revision tools and processes

Make substantive suggestions grounded in shared criteria

Review project criteria
Focus on global changes in the early stage of a draft
Focus on language and formatting changes in later stages
Exercise 6.5: Practicing positive, future-focused feedback

Assign a team member to do a final edit for consistency and accessibility

Summary

Chapter 7: Running Team Meetings

Determine the purpose and structure of the meeting

For Discussion: Structuring meetings

Prepare for the meeting

Prepare and circulate an agenda

Require homework and pre-reads

Conduct straw polls or surveys prior to the meeting

Exercise 7.1: Plan a meeting

Structure conversations to increase equal participation

Establish no interruption rules

Use criticism-free periods to generate ideas
Establish turn-taking rules to equalize discussion
Be systematic about making decisions
Use polling tools
Use screens to focus attention
For Discussion: Structured conversations

Have good group etiquette during the meeting

Use additional strategies for virtual meetings

For Discussion: Virtual meetings

Follow up after the meeting

Update the task schedule
Distribute meeting minutes
Callout: Action items in meeting minutes vs. Task schedules: What’s the difference?
Exercise 7.2: Analyzing meeting minutes

Summary

Exercise 7.3: Troubleshooting problematic team meetings

Chapter 8: Troubleshooting Team Problems

Decide who to involve
Pick the medium
For Discussion: Selecting meeting

Phrase the communication to focus on solutions

Callout: Address problems early
For recurring problems, work to discover root causes
For Discussion: Role-playing root cause analysis

Troubleshoot problems with showing up and turning in work

Problem: A teammate misses a meeting

Problem: A teammate turns in poor-quality work

Problem: Your initial efforts are unsuccessful

Troubleshooting problems with personal interactions

Problem: My team doesn’t trust me to do good work

Problem: My team isn’t listening to me

Problem: Other team members are not committed to a high-quality product

Problem: My teammates do and say things I find disturbing or demeaning

Problem: My teammates are not open to revisions to their work

Summary

Exercise 8.2: Troubleshooting

Appendix: Sample Meeting Minutes

Product Updates

Detailed case studies allow students to work through real-world examples and better understand the implications of their choices as writers and researchers.

Grounded in research, this volume provides evidence-based, classroom-tested coverage of this topic in greater depth than a survey text.

A Guide to Working in Groups

Informed by new research into conflict management and equity in teamwork, Team Writing, 2e shows how written communication can help writers contribute to team projects meaningfully—and avoid breakdowns that can derail a project’s success.

Team Writing 2e is a volume in The Bedford Series for Technical and Professional Communication, a set of flexible, affordable texts that provide research-driven coverage and real-world case studies and examples to help readers hone their writing and communication skills for a variety of technical and professional contexts. Other volumes in the series include:

Writing with Focus, Clarity, and Precision
Writing about Data
Writing Proposals
Equity and Communication

Related Titles

The Bedford Bookshelf (1-Term Online)

Bedford/St. Martin's

Writing with Focus, Clarity, and Precision

Joanna Wolfe; Juliann Reineke

Writing about Data

Joanna Wolfe

Equity and Communication

Joanna Wolfe

Writing Proposals

Joanna Wolfe; Emily Barrow DeJeu

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