Do we really need version history of documents?

This is something that's been bugging me for awhile so I thought I would throw it out there. "Is it really worth keeping version history of documents?". Other than legal reasons, I can't see why any would need version history of a document. Source code. Sure. Absolutely. A document? I'm beginning to think that there's no real reason why history is that important.

Look at a document. Okay, so you'll be able to go back in time and see that Joe added a paragraph or something. If you use Office, this feature is already built into the product. If it's a binary file of some kind (like a PDF) you really can't compare or track revisioning in the document (yes, Adobe had this feature but you need special tools to use it). The only case I can see is a text file where you can do diffs of the versions, but then why would I really care?

Retaining history seems to be so important to some, but I wonder if that's really the case? Maybe take a look at your documents and try to justify why you think you need a complete version history. Is it really worth keeping in the long run?

1 Comment

  • Hey Bill,



    Thanks again for that site link. Here in my real job www.stryker.ca we are going through ISO 9001 registration. When I showed our compliance officer what we could do with Version tracking she almost kissed me. (which would be good cause she's hot)



    So, there are folks that do need it. Good question though.



    dave

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