Virtual Collaboration – 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.

The last stretch – the localisation review

Virtual Team Project – Week 8

No more experiments this week. The graphics designer created the French graphics while the translation team finalised the translation, then I reviewed the translation against the source English instructions.

The translation required very few edits, mostly small consistency edits in terminology and syntax, which are expected when two or more people collaborate on a translation. Even in a one-person translation team, typos and other issues are likely, especially after spending a long period of time on a project. Four weeks ago, I talked about how editing gets less efficient with each round of reviews. And even advanced spelling and grammar checker software will not spot some issues.

During my review, I noticed some localisations choices, but I also noticed small issues in the English that the French translators did not reproduce. For example, in one instance, the glossary definition of a term was inserted with the bookmarked term within the instructions. This must have happened after during the last review before I created the PDF because this insert is too obviously out of place to be missed during a review. And the French team did not reproduce this issue. Similarly, the bold formatting on some UI terms was missing in some English terms, but not in the French UI terms. Great for the translation, but we did ask the translators several times to inform us of such issues so that we could improve the English text.

I recognise that as translators, we spot a lot of small details or bigger issues in source texts, but I know that in many cases the translator feedback gets lost along the way back to the source writer. So, spending time on detailed feedback of typos, missing words, unclear sentences, etc., can be very frustrating. And sometimes, as happens with editing, the brain corrects an error without even registering the issue.

Still, we did ask the translators for feedback several times, so I was a bit annoyed. At least, there are no major edits in the English that would require extra work from the writing team. That’s a victory!

The translation is now ready and formatted. The translation team is letting it rest for a while before reviewing it one last time. Hopefully, we will be ready to deliver this weekend.

Next week: the final recap blog post…

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.

We’re halfway there

Virtual Team Project – Week 4

Here we are, in the last week of editing. Well, maybe not. I am sure that the translation team’s work will highlight ways to improve the source text. But I will focus on editing this week. Based on discussions with other students in the programme and the blog posts of some of these students, this task has proved challenging for many teams.

The Team 2 process

Two weeks ago, our first draft served as a process for the writing /editing team to research the product and structure in sequential order all the content we needed to tackle. Each of the four writing team members participated in this draft one after the other, building on the previous writer’s input. This was the research & structure part of our process. This first draft had ca. 1,400 words (200 words over the maximum limit).

Then, one writing team member pared down this content to its most essential components and steps and proposed style guidelines. We were now at ca. 650 words (250 words under the minimum). This gave us a clear view of our goal: we needed to make all these steps as usable as possible, in plain language, and we could add between 250 and 550 words. 250-550 words are really not that much when they include the cover, table of contents, captions and glossary.

For the last ten days, the writing team has been adding content to this draft and editing it based on each other’s feedback. Members involved in the translation and final proofreading also offered feedback. As tracked changes piled up, every few days, we resolved feedback and created an updated version. By Tuesday of this week, we could see that the editing flow had dried up.

As a translator, I always found editing – in particular, self-editing – to be more draining than the actual writing or translating. Firstly, the brain tends to read faster than the eyes, guessing what is written instead of reading it, so you can easily miss typos and obvious errors, especially when you know the text already. So, editing requires a higher level of attention to detail. On the other hand, editing is a never-ending process because you can always improve the text. Any new pair of eyes can bring new improvements. The risk, then, is to lose sight of the big picture. Editing is about striking a balance between insufficient and excessive criticism, but also knowing when to take a step back.

A new pair of eyes

On Wednesday evening, we still had unresolved feedback and we still had to do most of the formatting – which would require more feedback. We needed to do all this by Friday in order to be on time for the second test before the final proofreading. Among all team members, I realised that I was the most likely choice to offer a new point of view.

In general, I think the project manager should avoid taking on development tasks. The project manager leads and coordinates the team, and he /she makes decisions. If he /she produces work as part of the development, his /her objectivity might be called into question. During the two weeks of writing and editing, I skimmed over the content, made suggestions to get the feedback rounds started and then I concentrated on other members’ feedback. I avoided creating content. However, by Wednesday, it became clear that I might be able to unlock our situation by making editing decisions, so I resolved the feedback, did the formatting (except the cover), and inserted the graphics we had.

My intention was not to impose arbitrary decisions – I kept a copy of all the feedback for reference. But when you are stuck, implementing ideas can be the solution to decide whether to discard or keep them. Only by seeing what your ideas look like in context can you really test their adequacy.

Also, I am glad that the writing team only implemented limited formatting until Wednesday. They focussed on sequencing the content appropriately, which provided a clear template for me to propose a visual identity with MS Word styles, a glossary, navigation links, etc. Though the formatted document looks very close to the previous version, the different fonts, colours, spacing, etc., seemed to help the writing team to see the content with fresh eyes. It also moved us toward the testing phase as team members reported potential compatibility and usability issues.

Had we followed a different writing process, we could have avoided this situation or solved it differently. For example, we could have split the writing /editing team between two writers and two editors, with the editors working simultaneously or sequentially. In case of editing fatigue, the writers could have taken over again. The two writers and two editors would have worked in cycles. Instead, because of clashing schedules, the writing /editing team organically adopted a four-people collaborative configuration. This configuration worked for this small, non-technical project, but I recognise that it may be too messy for larger scope projects. Laziness is also a risk, especially in a one-person editing team: feeling relieved that you have overcome your editing inertia, you may be tempted to think that your editing work is finished.

Conclusion

When I write or translate, I tend to spend most of my time on the first draft. I want it to be as close to the final version as possible. Not that I hate editing. I don’t, and editing will happen anyway. But projects like this virtual collaboration highlight the biggest challenges of editing: getting stuck in never-ending feedback and striking a good balance between excessive corrections and missed errors. While the solution I described here is not viable for every project type and configuration, I believe that, with careful follow-up, it can be a valid option to overcome inertia after several editing loops.

All hands on deck

Virtual Team Project – Week 3

In week 3, all members of Team 2 continued to be mobilised and focussed delivering a “First Draft” to the translation team by Monday 25 February and we learnt two major lessons about drafting instructions and the need to be flexible. As always, all the time mentions refer to the Irish/French time zones unless otherwise indicated.

A mobilised team

We are very lucky to have a team that is completely mobilised to reach our goals. Here are a few examples.

The 1^st draft (not the “First Draft” above) was ready on Sunday 10 February afternoon and we were aiming for a 2^nd draft by Sunday 17 February. On Monday 11, one writing team member said that she would start working on the 2^nd draft to propose some writing guidelines. By Tuesday 12 evening, she had edited the whole draft and aggregated a PDF with the guidelines she used! Similarly, our graphics designer prepared the first round of graphics within two days based on the 1^st draft. We were now a few days ahead of schedule with fully-functional guidelines and graphics to review. My hat’s off to them!

Starting each new discussion on WhatsApp, I can’t help but feel like I am barging into each team member’s life and asking him/her to drop everything at once. I hope that this is only an impression and I have told my teammates that I do not expect answers urgently. I only intend to start a discussion. Nevertheless, I haven’t had to wait long to get a question answered or a discussion started. This week, whenever someone made edits or provided feedback, the other team members – including the translation team – reviewed these edits and this feedback shortly after. When we discussed running the first test on the 2^nd draft this week instead of waiting next week (more on that later), the tester made himself available immediately.

With our busy schedules, we did not maintain this pace all week, but everyone made sure to maintain good communication. For example, one team member informed me that his schedule this week made it hard for him to follow the WhatsApp group chat, but that he wanted to participate in the team’s efforts. We agreed that I would send him a private message whenever we needed his input. I understand his position because it mirrors my fears about using group chats to make decisions. I appreciate the fact that he was forthcoming about the situation.

To make discussions easier to follow, I thought of proposing set chat hours as suggested in “Take The Pulse Of Your Virtual Team”. However, based on my teammates’ schedules and the time differences, that would leave very short windows to discuss the project each week. Decision-making may be more efficient as a result, but it might be too efficient. We haven’t found a time window for live team meetings yet, and I am worried we would become Team Robot. Still, in an effort to facilitate communication and updates, I asked that all team members state all their feedback in the latest draft and graphics files. This is not as easy as it sounds with a WhatsApp group chat, but I expect this will be particularly helpful with the next round of edits.

Lessons in flexibility

When we decided on tasks and a schedule, we did not take enough time to do an in-depth analysis of the structure of our instructions. Of course, we discussed what we would cover in the instructions. We would talk about creating a WordPress account, creating a blog, writing/deleting a blog post, assigning categories, collaborating on a blog, etc. I think we all knew the importance of defining the structure of one’s content before writing, but we fell victim to the curse of knowledge. “Sure, the WordPress user interface is not very usable, but the process is straightforward.” It is, once you know it.

With everyone’s feedback, we realised that we had not covered all possibilities, like the availability of a Google sign-in option, the display of alternative languages depending on your location and device settings, the need to provide directions even if screenshots are available, the need for definitions for a “non-technical audience” (what are keywords for?). When we realised that I did not get the same starting page as the others because I am based in Ireland with a French device, we decided to run the first test on the draft this week instead of next week.

As mentioned earlier, the tester moved right away and we all benefitted from it. His feedback as a non-user of WordPress unlocked more feedback from the rest of the team. This was the Russian doll of feedbacks, with each new finding unleashing a new set of feedback and content to include. Fortunately, the 2^nd draft had gone down to less than 700 words, so adding content won’t be a problem.

Conclusion

This past week showed once again that our team is responsive, that it takes initiative and that it is committed to reaching the team’s goals despite busy schedules. Maybe we should have prepared a detailed structure for our content as a first step, but I think that starting with a rough draft worked in our favour. Firstly, we were ahead a schedule thanks to this draft and it lifted our spirits and encouraged us to keep the pace. Secondly, the 2^nd draft put the team in usability testing mode. It allowed everyone to participate in defining style guidelines and in structuring the content.

We are handing in the text for translation in one week. Until then, let’s see what new challenges await us.

References

Sookman, C. (2018) ‘Take The Pulse Of Your Virtual Team’, IAAP Edge, 21 July, available: https://edge.iaap-hq.org/2018/07/21/take-the-pulse-of-your-virtual-team/ [last access 17 February 2019].

Sailing toward a common goal

Virtual Team Project – Week 2

After a slow start with some scheduling difficulties, this week Team 2 agreed on a roadmap, picked up speed and is now one day ahead of schedule. In this post, I reflect on the challenges that we faced and how we prevailed. All the time mentions refer to the Irish/French time zones unless otherwise indicated.

Coordination

When we started sharing individual availability to set up a live team meeting, it quickly became evident that such a meeting would not happen this week either. Between studies, part-time or full-time jobs, and several time zones, the highest team count in any time slot was five out of ten. Five hardly seemed enough. Any decision made during the live meeting would ignore the input of half of the team. We could use the opportunity to at least get to know one another, but we would still exclude five people.

Why not have several partial meetings then? I did not suggest it because several meetings would mean an even greater time commitment from all members without the same social or task benefits as a full team meeting.

Without the possibility of a team meeting, we had to rely on our Whatsapp group chat. Still, I hope we can organize at least one team meeting or some task-focused partial meetings.

Task-oriented asynchronous communication

This particular virtual project is different from regular projects in a professional setting because our team members have to balance a student life (with several projects), a professional life (with other projects) and a personal life. At the same time, we all need to be able to rely on one another and to maintain a dynamic sharing of information and opinions. At least in the past week, we seem to have adopted a communication pattern:

As the project manager, I start the day by listing the topics that we should discuss for the day and I ask the team members to share other topics they would like to tackle (the agenda).
Then I might get the first topic “on the table” and make suggestions. I would rather avoid always making suggestions. However, in this asynchronous setting and with our busy schedules, I find that calling for feedback on my suggestions helps to launch the discussion.
Team members start to participate depending on their respective schedules. The discussion continues until late in the evening – until US team members have had a chance to participate after work/college.
Then, I recap the tasks we have completed and the decisions we have made. I also propose the next agenda. This way the US members can start to give their input and think about what they want to share or need from their team members.

The whole team stepped up to make asynchronous communication work. Everyone was up and running on Whatsapp by Wednesday morning. By Friday evening, we had agreed on a topic for the instructions, a detailed schedule and a new tester role. The writing/editing team (two in Orlando and two in Limerick) also agreed to have the first draft ready by Monday.

Fast forward to Sunday afternoon and the first draft is ready one day ahead of schedule and all four writing/editing members contributed content and feedback. This is great progress in a short amount of time.

Conclusion

Maybe we were not able to have a live meeting to get to know each other, but everyone focussed on reaching team goals and displayed a proactive and optimistic attitude. Asynchronous communication may have made us more efficient because our discussions are task-oriented. While we have not had casual chats, we are starting to share more personal information little by little. It seems that, for our team, bonding will happen slowly over the course of the project. This week showed that we can already trust one another.

Back in the Saddle?

Virtual Team Project – Week 1

So, here’s the deal. My fellow Limerick students and I have to participate in a virtual collaboration project with students in Orlando and Paris. Together, we need to write instructions for an online tool and then translate these instructions into French. That does seem in my wheelhouse… This past week was all about getting to know each other, assigning roles, and deciding the basics of our communication and management processes. Simple, right? Not so much when you have ten people spread over three countries and as many universities.

We saw quickly that we would not have a live online team meeting this week and we would have to rely on emails until everyone joined our Whatsapp group. Long email threads are not ideal, though they were the norm where I was a project manager so I might be more comfortable with them than my teammates.

I am a bit anxious at the thought of Whatsapp being our main means of communication. May I remind you that there are TEN of us? Have you ever tried to organise anything online with more than two people? Don’t get me wrong, a group chat is great: because it is informal, people may share their thoughts more freely. But is it adapted for structured communication and for making decisions? In my opinion, email or any other structured form of communication is still required to keep the focus on set objectives. One option: I may recap the chat daily (or as needed) to summarise what came of it.

Yes, I am the team’s project manager. That was not my intention as I thought the role could provide a useful experience for someone else. I had my eye on a localisation consultant/editor role. Eventually, I did take over planning this week and though I offered to step back, my teammates agreed to leave me this role. In my previous experience, the rules were more clear-cut – I made the decisions based on data from all the project stakeholders (internal client stakeholders, translators, proofreaders, post-localisation designers, reviewers, etc.). In this project, I think we will all benefit from having everyone participate in the decision-making process. So, the main challenge for me will be to foster structured individual engagement – in Whatsapp. Let’s see how this goes.