I often don’t give versioning enough credit for how complex it is or how nuanced it can be when collaborating with others to create a document. Usually when I think about versioning it’s about how to track the progress of a document through its various stages of revision from draft to final. Even this seemingly simple process can get wildly complicated in the absence of standardized naming conventions and collaborative work spaces and that doesn’t take into account other types of version variations such as those used for different languages or created specifically for different audiences. And at the core of all the versioning variations, we’re really just looking for a way to track a document through its development and capture where major decisions were incorporated into the document. In principle it doesn’t sound complicated, but in today’s dynamic and busy workplace with so many fragmented processes version management (and tracking) becomes rather complicated.
Versioning Naming Conventions
Whether working solo on documents or in collaboration with others, it is important to have standardized naming conventions for versioning. (This may become less critical when working in an ECM (or other type of repository) that has versioning functionality, but standardized naming conventions can serve other useful purposes as well.) I have seen a huge amount of variety in how to denote versions, as follows:
- Appending v1, v2, etc. to the end of the document name
- Appending the date to the end of the document name
- with this option it’s important to agree on which order to write the date (mm/dd/yy or yy/mm/dd, etc.) or if the month will be letters or numbers
- Appending initials to the end of the document name to show who recently worked on it
- Writing the stage of the process into the document name (e.g. PRE-FINAL, FINAL, APPROVED)
- Adding in a language abbreviation (e.g. for documents that require translation)
Having just worked collaboratively with two other colleagues, the naming for the versioning became critical to make sure we were always working on the most current version. And of course the naming is really just a way to track the document through its revisions.
When Final doesn’t mean Final
Among the list of versioning challenges, one of the biggest remains how to determine when a document is really FINAL. It’s seems almost inevitable that even the most polished document will still require a few minor changes after it’s been finalized resulting in complications about how to denote and identify the document’s true status.
I recall working with a group of accountants who told me it was almost impossible to find and verify the final version of anything. Having a final and trusted version of a financial document is of critical importance where one wrong, or modified number can have a large impact. I innocently asked the client, who incidentally was working in a shared network drive at the time, “Don’t you just put ‘FINAL’ in the name of the document?”
And yes, they had been doing that, but then it became FINAL v1, FINAL v2… and they were in the same predicament as with the pre-final versions.
Although many people refer to the end version as the FINAL, it’s occurred to me that the end point is often not consistently defined. What does “final” really mean anyway? Does it mean that we’ve stopped working on the document? That it’s complete? Or that it’s complete and has been approved by a governing body or senior executives? The term can have ambiguity in its definition, which sometimes creates confusion with versioning.
It’s quite common in my line of work as a consultant that my FINAL version often has to be approved (or accepted) by the client, signifying the end of the project and document. So in many scenarios the final document is actually the APPROVED document. I’ve actually seen this naming convention adopted for certain documents, such as policies, that require approval after being finalized. Instead of naming the document “Social Media Policy – FINAL” it will be named “Social Media Policy – Approved 22 July 2014”.
Stay tuned for the next posting on Versioning Styles & Disposition.