“Collaboration is Cooperation on steroids.”

—Randy Nelson, Pixar University

When people ask us what Jumpchart is, our answer is always, “It’s an online collaborative wireframing app.” But recently we got to thinking: What is collaboration, really? A common definition lands somewhere in the neighborhood of, “Collaboration means working together towards a common outcome.”, which isn’t a bad definition. But it isn’t the most correct definition either. So, the question still stands: What is collaboration? And how does it help you get your website project organized in Jumpchart? To answer those questions a little etymology will be helpful.

Both cooperation and collaboration spring from the same latin origin, collaboratus, which means: to labor with. However; like many latin–based words still in use today, there are substantial differences in their historic and present-day meanings. The words collaborate and cooperate paint very different mental images. Even their choice in example sentences sheds light on the modern distance between the two words. You cooperate with the police, while you collaborate on intellectual endeavors. Cooperation signals that you are working with someone based on an obligation — the guy is a co-worker so you have to cooperate with him, no matter that you think he’s the spoon in the knife drawer. Simply working together towards a common outcome is merely cooperation, and we tend to agree with Randy Nelson on the subject. Collaboration carries with it a higher purpose. You collaborate with someone because you both understand that there is something more important at stake and you are putting your trust in each other to bring something good to the table.

This distinction is an important one to us. We built Jumpchart around the mantra that planning a website project actually constitutes the most crucial (and time consuming) portion of work towards reaching a launched site. We also believe that thorough planning, with the close collaboration of the client, can effectively side-step most project roadblocks and emergencies. Does it work? Well, we can only speak of our own experiences but the simple answer is, yes. Since we’ve started using Jumpchart (21 months ago) we have never had to restart a project from scratch. Never. We’ve also shortened the overall time it takes us to complete a project start-to-finish and vastly simplified our workflow. The reason for all of this? Collaboration.

With Jumpchart, we’ve been able to significantly reduce the number of steps in the build process based on that secret ingredient: Collaboration. Jumpchart not only allows, but encourages, the client to help with the process of planning and constructing a semi-working wireframe of their site. They can move content around, create links, add images and files, even click around in working copies of their wireframe. You’d be surprised how much of a difference this makes to the overall project- clients don’t have to wait around until someone emails them with a list of required content, they don’t have to wait until the design team shows them how their site will work with stacks of mockups, they don’t have to wait period. It’s immediate gratification, and who doesn’t like that?!

Another added benefit of enabling direct conversation is that it gives the client a sense of ownership in the project. We’ve gone over this a hundred times before but we’ll say it again because it’s so important: clients who feel ownership are clients who will fight for your agency. They will back up your work in their internal meetings and they will push to hire you again in the future. They become your evangelists within their own organization.

From the beginning we’ve tried to make Jumpchart as open and transparent as possible. Allowing your clients to work right alongside you may seem terrifying at first but we would encourage you to give it a try, even if only on a small scale at first. True collaboration can completely transform the way you run your business, making you more efficient and in the end, just plain happier. The old adage, “Two heads are better than one”, really is true. Collaboration is just another word for how you have to put those heads together.