This guide is meant to help those involved in collaborative environmental management situations to identify the key contextual factors or elements of these collaborations that lead to their success or failure. As researchers, we are still learning about these conditions; feedback from practitioners in the field will help advance the knowledge about the important processes of collaboration so that key conditions of success can be shared more widely around the world. This guide is based solely on a selection of the current literature on the topic of collaborative management and collective action. We aim to test and enrich this list with case study research, to learn how context conditions these variables, and to identify which are the most important factors in certain contexts. It is important to note that not every condition must be present in a collaboration for the collaboration to be considered successful. Although we suggest that collaborations in which a large number of the listed conditions are present will likely be successful that may not always be the case. Practitioner comments and feedback are therefore welcome and much appreciated