When you’re working on a project there will always be documents to write and because you write documents you will then get caught in review cycles.
The rough time split to get a document approved seems to be somethings in the region of 20% to write and 80% to refine and get approval (that’s probably being kind in some organisations!). So with that in mind anything you can do to make this quicker will help enormously.
Why the split? Well when you fire and forget emails to people to review you will inevitably get into a game of email ping pong with multiple versions of documents on multiple file stores / desktops / thumbdrives all out of sync wasting large amounts of time just pulling together all of the information and then trying to sort out the conflicting points!
The first suggestion I would make would be not to write documents but to collaborate on them. Maybe let someone write a very rough draft to get the bulk of the details into the template - which you should collaborate on to start with 
and then sit down together to review.
By completing the changes in a room ( / virtual room) with all the relevant people to hand all of the debates that would take days/weeks over email are streamlined into the process of the review. Better yet at the end of the review you already have the completed document ready to be formatted nicely and signed off.
Working over distance? No worries try some tools like Google docs and have live collaboration sessions down to the point of seeing exactly where someone else is working! In a more corporate environment – check out which version of SharePoint you may be using (lets face it most people are in some way by now) and if it’s 2010 use this as a means of sharing documents for “live” collaboration.
GHTime Code(s): nc nc
