I Liked It Better the Last Time

Fact

Product Pathfinder is the only product management software solution that automatically tracks different versions of every document so product managers can collaborate effectively with other stakeholders.

The Problem

Product Management is a collaborative discipline. Documents, spreadsheets, and graphics are created and shared. The stakes are high. Executives have opinions. Founders have opinions. The fouders usually get their way. All stakeholders provide feedback and recommend changes.

This process can take many forms, and none of them are pretty. The most common scenario is a lot like “email tennis”. Requirement, specification, business case, and positioning documents get created and e-mailed to a group of stakeholders. These stakeholders will sometimes email back their recommendations (on the second line of the third paragraph of the fourth page you will notice . . .) and other times will make the changes directly to the document and send it back in a new email. After a few rounds, everybody is confused and nobody knows what just happened. To make matters worse, the IT administrator is mad because all these documents are choking up the email server.

Another scenario is for the more technically savvy among us. The original document is saved to the corporate network. This can take some work to coordinate. The participants actually have to be in the office or have remembered their RSA key fob to connect to the VPN. But that is only the beginning. The instructions in the e-mail clearly state that the documents should be saved with a new name so everybody’s changes can be reviewed. The protocol is usually an underscore with a number that keeps getting bigger (ex: file_1.doc, file_2.doc, etc.).

This should work well, right? . . .Wrong.

Remember, the executives don’t actually read your emails, but they do have opinions about the positioning document. The VP of Something updates the document and saves it directly back to the network with the same name as the original. His ideas are terrible, but what can be done. The old file is gone and the IT administrator is again mad because he has to waste his time trying to track down deleted files on the network.

The Solution

Development teams understood this problem years ago and they use very sophisticated source control programs to get around it. Product Pathfinder provides much of the same benefit without requiring any actual thinking on the part of the user. Every document that gets uploaded will have a complete document history available. If it is never needed, then nobody is the wiser. When it is needed, you just saved an entire day worth of work.

Select a solution below to find out more about Product Pathfinder