It’s Week 5 and the deadline for the English version of our instructional document is due next Monday.

What happened?

Me and my team have finished the English version of the instructional document, it’s been uploaded to the French team’s folder ready for translation and a summary email has been sent to all team members.

What was I thinking? How was I feeing?

I am feeling good about the project so far, the American team created a good front and back page and completed some editing work. I seem to have swapped roles from proofreader to technical writer, but that is fine by me.

What was good and bad?

It’s been a good week as the American team have contributed and taken some of the workload. The graphics work has improved the document. The bad parts, still no word from the French team. They are technically on holiday at the moment, but they haven’t actually had any input on anything so far.

Can I make sense of the situation?

The French team have sent a few emails and have joined the Slack project, but no contribution. We’ve had to make decisions without them due to time. In the summary email I sent I asked them if they are okay and if everyone can see the messages in Slack.

What else could I have done?

Create a better schedule. Or actually create a schedule…! I think lack of a schedule has generally affected some aspects of this project. We’ve managed to piece it together at the end, but it certainly would have helped.

If this happened again, what would I do differently?

I suppose looking back at the situation, we should have pencilled in the leave dates for all team members into a schedule. Maybe we should have encouraged the French team to be more involved. I’m not sure how we would have done that though.