Group Tools for Writing Together in Praxis

Group Tools for Writing Together in Praxis

At the lesson n:o 7. Saila Ovaska explained about the tools for working together. I just have an experience about group writing and I like to analyze it shortly here.

This Group Writing project, which I like to speak here, took place in an international device development project. The tool for writing was Google group tools,
Member comes from France, Spain, Switzerland, Cyprus and German.

The purpose of the writing project was to define excellent specification to a high end electrical devise and later apply development funding from European Commission for it.

After wards, when I see the project writing history, the use of group writing deviates into three phases.

The ordinary plane was to make the application paper ready as normal group writing method. We taught that we do the writing together from beginning to the end with same writing code principles.

The writing of the paper began very well and after half year the nice “skeleton” was ready. The final writing the phase, where we start to write “meet around bones” begins.

During this writing process writers did well, but when the latest version of the application paper came closer to the final version the number of different versions increased so much, that no one of writers did not knew exactly are the handling the latest version of the paper.

The third phase of the writing project started, when the consortium management decided to stop the group writing. The next step was that the consortium management group nominated one person for responsible person (Author) for finalized the application paper.

During this very final writing “turning” of the paper all writers sent their latest modifications to the Author and he fitted all latest modifications together.

During this third phase of writing the amount of modification grew three times higher, what it was during the second phase of writing. This was somehow confusing. The Author managed to handle all changes and modifications very well.

At the end the modifications started to be very little details of the project. The Author decided to frees to final version and not aloud any more changes.

The Author sent the latest version to members of the consortium for approval.

My conclusion after the project was that group writing is good tool for developing ideas. As well it is great tool for developing new ideas.

When writing project goes to details and it takes official forms the code of group writing have to define accurately and the writing discipline have to be very tide.This means, that to allow new changes to document must be very difficult at the end of group writing project.

Erkki