Many of you work in environments in which collaborative design is not only recommended, but often necessary. Many of you will also know what a hassle it is to try and work on a co-worker's components. Many people know how to design a simple part, but they don't know how to design a part for a collaborative environment. The idea is about keeping your designs simple, and designing using a logical format.
Your model tree should not look like this.
When I did design work, I remember there always being atleast one coworker who'd submit work with 40+ features in the model tree. Quite a few of those features we're supressed, turned off, or completely overridden by other features. It's a mess to work with and wastes time, since someone has to essentially study the part before they can make changes.
I want to leave you with a few quick tips on how design wisely for collaborative work:
1.) Always attempt to design using your origin planes!
This object was drawing using the Origin Point as it's very center.
It absolutely grinds my gears when I have to make a change to a part, and it's floating off somewhere, far away from any logical sketch plane. You should always use your origin planes if possible, especially on a symmetrical part. It can make mating parts in an assembly easier (if you mate objects using the origin planes), plus, you never have to worry about your origin planes disappearing or changing during a part revision.
2.) Fully constrain your sketches!
This sketch is fully constrained as shown by the arrow.
Always make sure every single one of your sketches is fully constrained. Try not to make these sketches bloated with dozens of dimensions either. Changes in unconstrained sketches have a decent chance of messing up your overall sketch.
3.) Design in a logical order of features!
Design the rough shape of the part before adding any minor nuances...
When starting your design, create the basic shape of your design before adding any minor nuances. For example, if your going to make an extrusion, draw the rough shape of the extrusion, but leave all holes, chamfers, and fillets out of the sketch - it may take longer to design the part (slightly) but it'll create a more logical design tree that's easy to understand and make changes to. This is important for several reasons: (a) it creates less complicated sketches which are easily understood by a co-worker, and (b) it creates less dependencies and relationships between features and sketches (this means the part is less likely to break when making changes).
4.) Ask yourself, if a co-worker needs to get make changes to or get rid of a feature, will it break the part?

Really give it some thought...
After you've created the basic shape of your object, add any holes using the hole features before adding Fillets, Chamfers, or any other commands from the Modification Panel. This is important due to how the part file is created in Inventor. For example, if you've placed a fillet before a hole feature, and the hole has dependencies related to the fillet, you can no longer delete that fillet without creating errors (i.e. more time for a co-worker to have to figure out how to fix it).
5.) Review your design at the end!
Doesn't matter how simple or complex the part is, you should be able to make changes to nearly any sketch or feature without it resulting in broken dependencies. Take the time to go back through your design and ask yourself, "If my co-worker needs to change this item, will they be able to do so simply?"
It's worth it to do most of your design work in this format. As always a logical design beats a fast design every single time.
If you have any suggestions, or tips on how to design in a collaborative environment, let me know what you think in the comments below.