In some jobs, however, fast and furious document production is a core need.  For example, consider a traveling team of sales people who are all generating lots of business proposals to customers every day.  Building documents by editing on laptops in hotel rooms, getting all the approvals and amendments necessary for release, and delivering it into the customer's hands quickly enough to get the order can be the lifeblood of the business.

    Or, for a different set of needs, imagine an engineering team designing a new and complex piece of equipment.  There are lots of people involved, and trades-off to be made, some of which have to be remade in light of later discoveries.

    Each of these needs has different requirements.  If you don't have the right tools, you can't expect the best results.

    There are dozens of document-sharing and collaboration tools that dispersed teams can use.  When you understand what's important, you can help your technologists understand which are important so they can pick the right tools for your team's needs.  Here're the major components that may prove important to your team:

    Most people are familiar and comfortable with Microsoft Word.  A good tool will leverage that experience.  You might not have to adopt Word itself, but similar kinds of menus and similar underlying concepts (e.g., the use of the clipboard) will help people be productive.

    You have to provide some way for people to work from earlier documents, so they don't always have to start from a blank page.  The specification for a pump is probably similar to some prior specification (perhaps by another team, working out of another city), so we want to be able to keep track of those documents for future re-use.

    In the beginning, a document taken from a library needs to be edited to make sure it's customized and relevant to the intended audience.  You certainly don't want information about one company to be inadvertently leaked to their competitor.  You also need some way to keep track of different versions of a document, and who's made changes or suggestions.

    One of the reasons for the popularity of Microsoft Word is its version management tools:  If you haven't used them, try Tools / Track Changes.  The changes are shown in a different color for each contributor, and a vertical bar is placed in the margin where changes are made. Caution, however:  It's possible for a dishonest person to disable that feature, make changes, and then re-enable tracking.

    When you have lots of reviewers, other contributors, or approvers involved, you need to have tools that will automatically route the current version of the document and grant each participant the appropriate permissions.  For example, you may be required to route a design specification past a different engineering team so they can understand what you're planning, but do you really want those people changing the text of your specification, too?  You probably want to make sure they have "read-only" permissions, and expect them to provide their feedback in some other way.

    Workflow typically uses eMail to pass the document around, or to pass timely messages that refer recipients to a central repository where they can open the document.  In effect, the process of writing, amending, approving and distributing final documents adheres to a set of business rules.  If your rules are complex and the number of players large, you may have a strong need for a sophisticated workflow in your document management tools.

    Finally, what happens to the finished document?  In many dispersed teams, it's just not practical to assume each person has the appropriate equipment at hand.

    Almost any computer can be used to send a document to a fax machine.  But, what if you need paper copies, printed in color?  What if the right people have to sign the paper copy before it goes out?

    Most of these final production requirements will be outside any computer-based system.  You need to make sure the procedures and processes are in place for making sure the intended recipients get the final document.  Maybe you do have to equip remote workers with the right printers so they can do their jobs well.

    We don't want to list the hundreds of potentially appropriate tools you might adopt; there are periodicals and services that already do that.  But, we recommend you think through these five major issues and decide what you really need to do the job, especially in light of a team of people scattered across lots of sites.  Then, develop those into a list of requirements, and submit it to technology professionals to find, acquire and deploy the right technology.

    Encourage the technology professionals to look for integrated solutions that cover your requirements, rather than cobbling together a bunch of separate parts.  A comprehensive solution will typically come from a company that understands document management as a whole process, so all the various parts fit seamlessly together.