Coordinating schedules, ensuring that everyone completes their tasks by their deadlines, resolving conflicts around competing ideas and personality clashes — collaboration can sometimes feel harder than herding a group of cats!
Yet, collaboration has many benefits. When people with different levels and types of expertise work together, they can come up with new angles of looking at old problems, leading to solutions that can greatly increase product value. Collaboration is also important for raising the efficiency of the product development process. When domain experts share their insights on particular aspects of a product, the team can more quickly identify problem areas and/or opportunities to focus their attention on.
But to tap into these benefits, one needs to first figure out a smooth collaboration process. This article will explore some ways to make the collaboration process better for all. It will first give an overview of stakeholder profiles to illustrate the unique contributions each stakeholder can make. Next, it will look at some common challenges that arise during collaboration. Finally, it will look at ways to address these challenges and improve the collaboration process.