The collaboration planning framework

Edited by Gabriele Bammer

What is the collaboration planning framework? What kinds of collaborations is it suitable for? What does it involve?

The collaboration planning framework, described by Hall and colleagues (2019), aims to help research teams identify, discuss and make decisions about ten key influences that the team science literature has shown to affect teamwork. The aim is to “lay the groundwork for success by supporting effective team functioning, identifying needed changes, and preventing or mitigating what are often predictable challenges” (p. 588). A written collaboration plan is used to capture the decisions made.

While the collaboration planning framework is most useful for large, complex teams, it can benefit any team.

The ten key elements of the framework are:
1. Rationale for team approach and team composition
2. Collaboration readiness
3. Technological readiness
4. Team functioning
5. Communication and coordination
6. Leadership, management, and administration
7. Conflict prevention and management
8. Training
9. Quality improvement activities
10. Budget/resource allocation
The elements will vary in importance and in the way they play out in different collaborations.

1. Rationale for team approach and team composition

In developing a collaboration plan it is useful to spell out the rationale for:

• using a team approach in addressing the particular research questions, and
• the specific team composition, in both size and mix of expertise.

Considerations could include the disciplinary expertise required, equipment needs and the role of “nonscientist collaborators” (p. 590).

2. Collaboration readiness

Assessing collaboration readiness has three components:

• individual collaboration readiness, which involves laying out individual team member interests, past experiences, “perceived threats” (p. 592) and other factors, taking into account the diversity of those involved;
• team collaboration readiness, which involves exploring “the mix of collaboration histories of proposed team members, and team leaders’ past experience with leading teams.” (p. 592);
• institutional collaboration readiness, which involves consideration of “the resources, infrastructure, and policies that each of the participating institutions has in place to support the collaboration” (p. 593).

3. Technological readiness

Considering technological readiness takes into account “the availability and planned use of technological resources to support the scientific collaboration” (p. 593), involving both:

• scientific processes, which includes “approaches for data sharing and collaborative analysis … as well as issues of confidentiality and intellectual property associated with technologies used or produced by the collaborative research” (p. 593);
• collaborative processes, which includes technologies for communicating and for coordinating effort (such as project management tools). The willingness and skills of team members in relation to using such technologies also needs to be taken into account.

4. Team functioning

Effectively dealing with team functioning involves addressing key processes and how they will be approached, such as:

• developing a shared vision and building trust;
• building a shared team understanding of the problem, the research questions and the approach;
• providing a psychologically safe environment;
• for cross-disciplinary teams, developing a glossary of terms and integrative processes;
• regular iterative reflection on the team’s processes and performance.

5. Communication and coordination

Effective communication and coordination include:

• for communication – attention to how and how often teams will meet, as well as asynchronous communication. This may involve addressing different assumptions across cultures and disciplines.
• for coordination – attention to the day-to-day operations, “such as how tasks get allocated, how resources get shared, and how work gets integrated into the collaborative effort” (p. 596).

6. Leadership, management, and administration

How leadership, management and administration are handled may vary from team to team, but generally involves:

• leaders helping “inspire and empower team members to engage in and support team processes integral to team function” (p. 596);
• managers setting in place processes to achieve the vision, such as establishing roles, identifying tasks and enabling research plans to be executed;
• administrative support for tasks such as hiring and reporting, as well as communication and coordination.

Specifying how each of these sets of tasks is handled is the role of the collaboration plan.

7. Conflict prevention and management

Conflict in teams is inevitable and can be productive or disruptive. It is helpful for collaboration plans to include strategies for both preventing and managing conflict, highlighting key potential sources of conflict, such as ownership of data and authorship order, as well as being able to respond to unexpected conflicts. In particular:

• conflict prevention strategies can be implemented at the individual, team and initiative levels, with each effectively involving expectations being made clear and then developing agreements for meeting expectations. This may include developing operating manuals with various policies and procedures.
• conflict management involves supporting and facilitating conflict which is productive, as well as resolving detrimental conflicts, including using “preexisting institutional resources for conflict management and resolution” (p. 598) and external resources, such as mediation.

8. Training

Training here refers specifically to improving collaboration skills and “may span from bolstering team science competencies to learning how to use new collaborative technologies” (p. 599). The collaboration plan may address:

• training content, ie., the specific skills to be provided or enhanced;
• training approaches, eg., courses, workshops or retreats, including the pedagogical approaches;
• training formats, eg., formal or informal, and online or face-to-face.

The collaboration plan may also address expectations about both participation in, and provision of, training by team members, including mentorship.

9. Quality improvement activities

The aim of the collaboration plan is to set out how and when teams will “engage in systematic and iterative reflection about team performance” (p. 600), as well as how the outputs will be used to “help address challenges and improve the quality of the collaboration” (p. 600).

10. Budget/resource allocation

“The Collaboration Plan should identify the specific budget lines or items needed to support the activities included in the plan” (p. 601), which are those highlighted in 1-9 above.

Concluding questions

What has your experience been with collaboration plans? Does the framework presented here resonate with your experience? Are there other elements that you suggest should be taken into account in the framework?

Reference:

Hall, K. L., Vogel, A. L. and Crowston, K. (2019). Comprehensive collaboration plans: Practical considerations spanning across individual collaborators to institutional supports. In: Hall, K. L., Vogel, A. L. and Croyle, R. T. (eds.). Strategies for team science success: Handbook of evidence-based principles for cross-disciplinary science and practical lessons learned from health researchers. Springer: New York, United States of America: 587-612. (Online) (Open access for the chapter): https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-20992-6_45.

A description of “Editor’s additions” is available in https://i2insights.org/index/integration-and-implementation-sciences-vocabulary/. This editor’s addition was produced by Gabriele Bammer using the reference above.

Gabriele Bammer PhD is Professor of Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S) at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at The Australian National University in Canberra. i2S provides theory and methods for tackling complex societal and environmental problems, especially for developing a more comprehensive understanding in order to generate fresh insights and ideas for action, supporting improved policy and practice responses by government, business and civil society, and effective interactions between disciplinary and stakeholder experts. She is the inaugural President of the Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity (2023-25).