Google Docs Revisions and PLM Collaboration

The following Google Apps Blog caught my attention few days ago – More Tools For Viewing Document Revisions. I found it interesting for several reasons. First, as a user of Google Doc, I can definitely confirm, that this is one of the most requested features. Second is a potential for collaboration.  Take a look on the picture below.

Revisions and Collaboration
In my view a transparent presentation of revisions and differences is a great feature. However, I’d like to take it step beyond. Combined with the ability to have multiple access by different people it becomes almost the most requested feature for collaboration. The ability to review file by a team of people, co-write and review results is a very powerful capability.

PLM: Working Together
A lot of product development tasks are collaboratively by nature. Unfortunately, “collaboration” becomes a bad word in a context of PLM. It was oversold by many marketing efforts. However, thinking about “work together” and “co-working” on the same documents, can be an interesting zone to invest in PLM products. I expect Google Spreadsheets will be coming to support the same “Revision” capabilities and it will be very cool.

What is my conclusion? I think, collaboration starts from a granularity of revisions and changes. This is a big thing to think about for all PLM vendors. Implementing collective access to document and content will convert it to very powerful collaborative applications.

Best, Oleg