Collaboration is a joint effort of multiple individuals or work groups to accomplish a task or project. A wide range of collaborative software (also known as groupware ) is available to enable collaborative communication. Collaboration may be asynchronous , in which case those collaborating are not necessarily working together (and in communication) at the same time; in contrast, collaboration may be synchronous (this is known as real-time collaboration), in which collaborative partners are working together simultaneously and in communication as they work.