Project Management – The Budding Techcomm Blogger

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Virtual Team Project – Wrap-up

Our virtual project came to an end on Monday 25^th March with the delivery of our English instructions and their French translation. Let’s wrap this up with a look back at Team 2s.

The project

Team 2 had ten members at its disposal to create and translate up to 1,200 words of instructions to help a non-technical audience to carry out a simple task in an online tool. With all team members having to maintain a blog during the semester and after agreeing that WordPress is less than intuitive for first-time users, the team set out to write instructions for beginners who want to set up their first blog in WordPress.

Team communication

Aren’t ten people a bit much to write and translate 1,200 words? Probably, but the point of the project was virtual collaboration. Collaborating with nine other people is challenging no matter the project. this was evidenced by our inability to find a suitable time for a single live team meeting over eight weeks.

If we were working full-time on this project, I would have expected my teammates to find the time for a live online meeting. But, on top of being spread out over four time zones, we all had jobs, studies, and other commitments to juggle. So, I did not push the issue. We already had the WhatsApp chat for live, on-the-go communication. I did not want to risk alienating one of our team.

That being said, I recognise that a live meeting would have been beneficial to break the ice and adjust our communication styles. Body language can be misleading, but it provides cues faster than written or phone communication. Instead, like most of the team, I tried to share about myself little by little in my messages, for example about other on-going assignments, and I brought in some emojis, but only the standard ones (smiling, laughing, crying) in non-ambiguous situations to avoid misinterpretation.

Another advantage of live online or face-to-face meetings is that they speed up decision-making. Live meetings with an agenda greatly improve productivity and certainty: people engage to make binding decisions in a defined timeframe. Only smaller details may need adjusting later through email or chat. I learnt that collaborating mostly through an online chat is more time-consuming, especially in our specific setup (see above). Sometimes, I had to “chase” members to get their input on a group decision. Did they not care or were they genuinely busy? I found gauging situations in an online chat even more arduous than in emails.

In general, I tried to stay positive in all our communications. Everyone will encounter difficulties, make errors and become frustrated at some point during a project. I have always found that I need to take a step back to re-frame my frustrations in a positive light. Despite the sense of urgency I feel when using WhatsApp, I forced myself to wait before answering messages, to try to rephrase my messages and consider other points of view. I used to do this as project manager, but I have not had to practise it as much as a translator, so I had to pay particular attention to knee-jerk reactions.

I also tried to point out our team’s progress regularly, focussing on all we had achieved and how “little” was left. I hoped this sense of achievement would maintain a positive mindset. Other team members also used this strategy, so I assume it resonated with them.

Leadership

I have been working in virtual teams for about ten years now, as project manager and translator, so I may have been more prepared than other teammates. However, I think no one is ever really completely prepared because each experience depends on the other virtual collaborators involved and the context.

As a translation project manager, my projects did not use to require all team members (vendors, salespeople, and clients) to interact. All communications and decisions went through me. This experience was quite different. Here, we were all collaborating live on WhatsApp and Google Drive. In addition, despite a variety of backgrounds and expertise, I felt that we were all qualified to give our input on all aspects of the project because this was the first experience for all of us. So my role was closer to a moderator, starting discussions, offering suggestions and trying to reconcile everyone’s input.

We had very few disagreements, which we resolved through votes if there was no single correct solution. However, I wonder if this means we were all in agreement with my suggestions, or if my teammates either thought I knew better from my experience or chose not to make their own suggestions. Given our context, I could understand the latter option. I just hope it was not the first option as I made sure to explain my approach several times.

The process

Writing

The writing team decided on a combination of alone work and collaboration. Within one weekend, we had the first draft with input from the four writers. I was not expecting this strategy, but it worked well for us. Each writer was able to feed on available content and to add their own input while keeping their own style. No one had to dedicate more than a few hours of their busy schedule and the writers could compare styles and make informed decisions on the most appropriate one.

I see how this strategy could easily become messy in a large scale project if an official writing style has not been agreed yet. However, I find this strategy was an effective way to play around with writing styles and learn from others. Also, it made each writer into a researcher and tester who had to go through the previous writers’ inputs before starting. No, the content was not 100% accurate in the first draft, but close. So, I think this strategy was a good decision from our writers for this project.

Then, over the two following weeks, the writers edited various drafts and I asked the whole team, including the translators, to give feedback to the writers. Given the pressure on the team to have the English instructions ready in about two weeks, I thought that having everyone’s input would be beneficial for the writers. Other team members were helpful, including the translators who noticed some inaccuracies. However, after a few editing loops, we started stalling. In hindsight, I would rather the writers edited and proofed in isolation until the final draft was ready for testing and final quality review. The QA team would have had a fresh look unencumbered by pre-existing knowledge.

Localisation

The translation process was quite smooth, at least from the English team’s point of view. One of the two translators acted as the main point of contact, and no questions or issues were pointed out in the English text. That is, there were small formatting issues that the translators corrected in the French, but they did not inform us despite our asking several times. Thankfully, it was nothing that our last proofreading would not have highlighted, but I am not sure what I would do to prevent this in future projects for non-obvious issues with a language unknown to me. I can only think of having a separate bilingual editor, one who has not worked on the translation.

This lack of communication during translation was disappointing because I explained to the translators how their input would be beneficial for the English text and for their teammates, and that non-translators would likely want to talk about translation in their blog posts. And one of the translators was active in our chats while we were writing the English text. I know this lack of teamwork is a common gripe among people working with translators, so I was disappointed that we did not lift the curse in our team despite communicating our expectations.

Finally, graphics localisation reminded me not to take my knowledge for granted. For me, it was obvious that localised graphics should look exactly like the source graphics and that graphics text should never be translated separately from the rest of the translation or using different resources. As both situations happened during the project, I realised that I had made assumptions based on my experience. I remember discussing the first issue during my translation degree and I know that non-translators may not be aware of the second issue. But this knowledge has become second nature and I forgot for a second that it is not universal. I will have to be more careful about this in the future.

The tools

Apart from Microsoft Word, we used three tools, Google Drive and Google Docs for storing and editing files, and WhatsApp for communication.

Google tools

Google Drive is a handy tool for sharing content. It took a second to master the sharing options. Other than that, I only have good things to say about it. The layout is clear, navigation is easy. We did not have any bugs. Google Drive kept its promise. Great!

Google Docs is another story. Overall, it is easy to use and intuitive, though I struggled to find some formatting options and it is not as rich as MS Word in terms of formatting. But the biggest issue is that it is prone to random formatting changes during editing and, if you implement formatting in Word and then open the Word file in Google Docs, some of the Word formattings will be corrupted and it will not be reinstated once you download again to Word. This means that once we implemented the final formatting on the instructions, we could not use Google Docs anymore.

Dropbox did not seem to have these issues for other teams. One Drive with Word 365 online might also be a good alternative if everyone can access it. I would be interested to collaborate either on Dropbox or One Drive to test whether they are efficient collaboration tools.

I never used WhatsApp professionally, so I was anxious about that. I always keep my personal content off my professional tools and emails, so I was uneasy having both personal and professional chats hanging out next to one another. Nothing to hide, but also no valid reason to have both in such close proximity. For one, in the moments where I decided to rest my mind from work or studying, I did not enjoy receiving this project’s notifications while I was talking to friends in another chat.

Another issue was that discussion and decision-making were very messy at the beginning. So much to decide! Do we keep all topics in one group chat or do create several chats for each topic? In a tool like Slack, I would definitely go the route of “1 topic = 1 chat”. In WhatsApp, we kept one chat and nobody even suggested splitting topics in different chats. I suspect mayhem would have ensued. Instead, in the same chat, I would start a topic with a long summary message and I would try to have one message per question so that other members could use the Reply message option to answer a specific topic/ question. Then I would summarise the decisions we agreed on.

The first ten days or so, I maintained chat minutes every day. This is when we had the longest discussions and I thought a summary of who proposed what and what decisions we took would be helpful. Members would not have to go through the whole chat thread then. I abandoned those minutes once our chats became shorter and focused on editing feedback. I kept using the long message structure, so anyone looking for new questions or decisions could look for these messages specifically to get a summary of discussions and decisions.

WhatsApp is not all bad. It allows for more informal communication and for resolving issues on the go. However, for me, it is not adapted to the professional follow-up of a project. I have never used a tool like Slack or Basecamp. Students in other teams used them and had good feedback about their usability and the learning curve, so I would like to try one of them in a future project.

Conclusion

Would I want to work in a virtual team again? It is very likely to happen given the nature of technical communication and the rise of remote work. Based on this experience alone, I have nothing against virtual teamwork in itself. Having worked in both virtual and face-to-face configurations, the main challenge really is the lack of cues that help to gauge a situation, like body language and tone. If you always work with the same team, this challenge fades progressively, especially with live online meetings. Otherwise, I find the configuration no less efficient than face-to-face teamwork as long as you have the right tools to facilitate collaboration.

Who should localise the graphics?

Virtual Team Project – Week 7

This week, the translation team worked away on the translation and the French graphics. They now have an almost final draft which requires some editing and formatting. However, my fears about the graphics have materialised.

When the translation team said they would take care of the French graphics, I was on the fence.

On one hand, they are in the best position to get the most accurate French screenshots, because they are accessing each screen during the translation. Also, they know both languages so they can easily match the French to the English, whereas our graphics designer is Irish and may not have the necessary level in French to do that matching work as quickly. I am sure he could do it, but it would take more time.

On the other hand, graphics design is another complex task that requires specific skills and tools. It’s one thing to dabble in Photoshop and to know how to edit photos and how to create simple drawings, it’s another thing to create elaborate graphics from screenshots and to be able to replicate the same process multiple times.

I had to create localised graphics as a project manager and maybe my more than inadequate skills in graphics design influence my opinion, but I think the graphics design skills should take precedence in graphics localisation. Give the designer the right screenshots and you should be fine. Give a non-designer the right design tools and I’m not sure you will get the right results. The non-designer might do great work, but it will be harder to recreate identical designs.

Nevertheless, the translation team showed a lot of confidence that they could take care of the graphics, so I decided not to push my preferences. This is one aspect of teamwork that might be the hardest to manage. Knowing when you should push back and impose a decision vs knowing when to take a step back and accept that other options might work just as well.

Today’s experience is timely. The person I interviewed for our interview assignment yesterday mentioned this as one of the biggest challenges of leading a team. In a team, everyone is an expert in an area and values their own input. One of the project manager’s jobs is to balance these egos, including his/her own. And I don’t mean “ego” in a negative, self-centered sense.

Our timeframe played a significant role in my decision. If we had to turn around the translation and the localised graphics within a few days only, I would have tried to impose the graphics designer option. However, this assignment is about honing our collaboration skills and trying new working strategies – and we had four weeks. Also, we agreed that the graphics designer would review the graphics and might intervene if necessary.

This weekend, the translation team shared their draft with localised graphics. The graphics are of high quality, with a good resolution and some interesting ideas, but they are very different from the source graphics. I had not anticipated this. It was obvious to me that the localised graphics should be identical to the source graphics (except for the text, obviously). However, the translators did their own thing here. I have never seen localised graphics that are completely different from the source graphics except when the available localised content is also completely different, which does not happen that much. I do wonder if that might happen more than what I have experienced…

This particular project is a valuable experiment in graphics design if only because it shows that different designers may come up with highly different graphics to showcase the same information, and all options may be valid. Still, with only one week left, we cannot spend more time experimenting. Other team members agreed that our graphics designer should take care of the localised graphics in order to ensure a consistent look across languages, and the translation team has provided him with the screenshots. We are now on the last stretch of this project and everything seems under control. We do not have any other “experiment” in progress, so I am cautiously confident.

On self-doubt and going back to school

Virtual Team Project – Week 6

I have to admit that it is getting harder to talk about our virtual team project now that the instructions are in translation. The translation team is working on it and they have not asked any questions. So far, so good? We will check in with them at the start of the week to ensure everything is going according to plan with the translation and the localisation of the graphics.

I have offered to do a review on the translation, but I am already questioning the validity of my input even though I am a translator and I used to be a translation project manager. As other students have told me, our group is in a unique position, but I do not feel more comfortable as a result, quite the opposite.

My pop culture-filled brain when thinking about this project (meme generated on imgflip.com)

Why? Even if this project simulates a professional project, I think it is the academic environment. I sometimes have this feeling that I haven’t felt since I finished college the first time. The pressure of meeting academic expectations seems more intense than the pressure I have felt in business environments. Not that I do not take my professional occupations seriously. Quite the opposite. And there are intrinsic and extrinsic motivators in both environments.

No, in this particular case, I think that the distinction between professional and academic environments is that, in a professional environment, I know I am qualified to do the job and collaborators inherently trust my expertise (I hope). On the other hand, I expect the academic environment to assess and validate constantly whatever task I undertake and this intensifies my doubts. Do other people feel this distinction? Is this only a remnant of my upbringing?

For this translation, my input may clash with the expectations of the French university professor. To everyone who asks me “Why not work for the EU? Or the UN?” (this happens a lot), I answer that apart from not being interested, I would most likely fail the exams because their expectations are so removed from the expectations of my preferred environment: business and technical translation.

This might be the same with academic translation. For example, anglicisms (in terminology or style) were frowned upon in my translation Master’s programme, so I would never use them. However, in a business context, I had to learn to use them to match customer preferences. Some anglicisms were harder to swallow and I had to push back on others that were plain wrong. But a wrong anglicism is hard to prove to a stubborn customer. That’s where experience comes in. Yes, our audience is made up of non-technical users, but our “customer”/assessor may have specific requirements.

I would be curious to find out how our team’s translation will fare, to see how it matches my expectations. As for reviewing the translation, we are lucky that the product exists in French with a glossary, so I will stick to comments and questions, and I will let our two translators be the experts. They have insights into the “customer”.

Musings on informal deadlines

Virtual Team Project – Week 5

Since my last post on Saturday 23^rd February, our team did two more rounds of review on the English instructions before we delivered them to the translation team on Monday 25^th. The rest of the week was very quiet. Because our two translators were on their winter break, the rest of the team was able to rest as well, or at least we were all able to take a step back from the project and focus on other courses and assignments

Of course, we could not escape last minute changes. Several members of our team reviewed the final instructions during the weekend, including a dedicated “final proofreader”, and they highlighted small details that had managed to evade our attention until then. Editing and reviewing really are never-ending tasks that require commitment and open communication until the very end. Nevertheless, we prevailed and had the document ready by the deadline.

Speaking of the deadline, there was no official deadline per se, though many of us in our team (including myself) and in other teams assumed we had to hand in this first draft to our module directors on Monday 25^th February even though it would not be graded. That was not the case. The confusion may stem from the assignment brief mentioning that we should “submit” the first draft by Monday 25^th February. Or we might all be obsessing over deadlines these days.

But I wonder… Would the English draft have been ready for translation by Monday 25^th February if we thought this was a “soft” deadline? In a real-life project, checking the meaning of deadlines would have been a priority. In this project, it seemed that, official or not, this deadline was meant to provide us with guidance and structure. Without a clear, official deadline, would delays have been more likely? I think so, and it would have been harder for me as project manager to justify my pushing back in that case. Even when there are no official deadlines for a project or a task, setting an informal deadline forces people to define a structure and a plan for action, and to stick to them. And it improves accountability.

As a freelance translator, most of my deadlines are short (so short), formal deadlines. Even then, I usually set other informal deadlines for translation and proofreading tasks, for administrative tasks, private business, etc. When I started freelancing, financial uncertainty was the biggest source of stress. It still is. This led me to accept any and all projects and I was quickly drained of all energy. I had to learn to set personal goals and deadlines and, most importantly, to stick to them.

The last part was more difficult, but I finally learnt to say “no” for my health. I have somewhat “fell off the wagon” as I juggle freelancing and the Master’s programme and the second semester is especially demanding. Not knowing when the next translation request will come in makes it difficult to organise my time by setting personal deadlines. Fortunately, financial uncertainty aside, freelancing means I can say “no” to work requests, which is not an option for many of my fellow students. I wonder how they cope with their workloads, studies and private lives.