Information exchange among teams involved in product development is and should be increasingly encouraged and supported by shared development tools. The emergence of collaborative project environments proves that this is a strong trend. However, for a collaborative environment to be truly effective, it is essential to understand the relations and information that will be shared by the many actors involved in the process, as well as their relations and their core competencies. This paper explores the importance of product development and how it is possible to accomplish that in a collaborative environment. The development process of injection moulds was selected as an environment to explore the ideas presented in this paper.