Communicating and Sharing Information

The importance of face-to-face meetings in collaborative work has already been emphasized. However, there will inevitably be significant time between physical meetings, when it is important to keep the communication channels open between the partners in a collaborative venture. Also, the venture will, over time, build up an information base that will be useful to all partners as the work progresses. Communication and information sharing are vital processes in collaborative work, for the following reasons: the need to communicate with a wide range of stakeholders, both those directly involved in the collaboration and others such as the organizational sponsors the need for working groups to communicate with each other on specific projects or initiatives the need to have a shared information repository for general use, to avoid duplication of effort or wasted time looking for information.