This year I've been involved in a several group-base projects. Rather than writing groups, where individuals come together with their own personal projects, I'm talking about groups where individuals work together on a single project. Some of these groups have worked brilliantly, others have been a shambles of who's-doing-what-when-and-where's-the-bit-I'm-supposed-to-be-doing? 

 During uni, and even more so this year, I have learned that rules apply to Working With Groups, whether it just be a group of staff members working together in an office, a pair of novelists collaborating, or a group of people working on a product. A lot of these are perhaps obvious to people who've worked in teams their whole career, but I still find myself winding up in groups who don't understand these basic means of functioning.

You need the right leader

When looking at which groups ran well and which floundered, there seems to be a strong correlation there with Groups Where I Was In Charge and Groups Where Someone Else Was Running Things. Correlation does not equal cause, of course, but choosing the right person to lead is essential. The best leader is not necessarily the most knowledgeable, experienced or even the bossiest person - rather, you need someone who is good at organising and managing resources (ie people, time), someone who has a high attention to detail and will remember or track each member's job progress.  That someone needs a reasonable level of tact and people-skills to manage meetings between egos and facilitate the best possible collaboration of knowledge and experience with a minimum of sulking. Unfortunately, this person is often not the one who puts their hand up to lead things, thinking that leading the group should be left to the person who talks the loudest, or the most, or the most confidently. But working with those kinds of people as leaders is sketchy at best.

You need rules

How much of a 'leader' is your leader? What is the penalty for not getting your work in on time? Is this to be treated as a paying job, a hobby or a moonlighting exercise? What is a reasonable ask, and what isn't? These things need to be clarified up front. Everyone needs to be on the same page with expectations of how the group will function as a unit, and their individual role in it (see next).

You need a structure or schedule

Who's doing what, when, and after what has happened? Depending on the size of your group and project, this may require defined roles and heirarchies for people, or just a simple list of jobs that need to be done, their dependencies (what needs to be done before said jobs can be done), approximate time and other resource requirements, deadlines, and who will be assigned to do them. You should also consider adding completion dates or notes, and keeping track of progress this way.

You need everything in one place

One of my projects involved about twelve documents flying back and forth between several people via email over about nine months. There were changes, suggestions and comments rife throughout all of them, and tracking which was the latest was a huge headache. Keeping everything in one place, including the "who's doing what" structure (see above. Which we didn't have.) with a sensible, consistent naming scheme would have solved the problem. Shared GoogleDoc documents, or a shared, dedicated DropBox accounts are how I would approach this in future. You need one central copy that the changes are made to. There are no 'extra' versions flying around that people can say "oops, sent the wrong one, please redo everything you just did to the other one!", or "not sure which is the latest", or "where are we up to?". There are no lost emails or documents. Everything is in one place, grouped together, logically structured.

What other things have you found are essential for working with groups?