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Ed Ziomek
Joined: 07 Jun 2005
Posts: 461
Location: Stamford, Connecticut
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 Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 9:24 am Post subject: Version Control, Electronic Document Management: How Best? |
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In my many occupations of the last 35 years, one of my best was as a documentation specialist, technical graphics contractor. Let me share with you the common fact, that no matter which industry I was working with, there was one common major complaint...
Version control, document management control of electronic documents.
The complaints most repeated were...
Who made these changes? Who authorized these changes? Where did all the updates go?
In legal departments, the results could be catastrophic... a missing comma might mean millions of dollars in liabilities.
In architectural departments, a loose scribble on a blueprint might mean (and in one reported case DID mean) a million dollar surveying mistake.
In a pharmaceutical marketing firm, we painstakingly scrutinized the medical dosage limit-number handed to us, as we were dealing in numbers and spelling-nuances none of the graphics people understood. Oh, by the way, we knew people could die based on correctly following doctor's complicated notes!
We live in a changing world. Most education is for individual efforts, and individual projects, with individual testing and outputs. Corporate America, in contrast, is increasingly "Work by Project Team" which includes the Sales person, the Engineer, the Architect, and the lowly production person like myself. Some people understand the nuts and bolts, sometimes the criticality of the subject being produced, many do not.
I ask the question...how does your office handle electronic updates on electronically filed documents, in a Group Project effort?
Is there any software out there that automatically tags each printout with a Filename, Login of Author, Date, Time, and version control number... such as.... QuestionVersionControl:EZ:012507:v12345?
Does any software company provide a locked-folder environment, that all files retained are the latest files updated, preventing multiple simultaneous access priveleges, with all previous-version files dropped into an archived historical file?
Note: I was reviewing one of the threads on this excellent DesignCommunity.com website, and I notice subtle changes in my submissions, with no acknowledgement that these comments have been "adjusted"...hence, some previous comments are not truthfully my own. For personal reasons, yes, it is disappointing that some form of anonymous hacking/editing is taking place without my knowledge.
For legal reasons, it raises some interesting questions from my work-environment past:
How best can electronic version-control and integrity be guaranteed in a Group-Work environment?
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Ed Ziomek |
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