About a year ago, before Backboard and Increo, I was working with a team to prepare a report on strategy recommendations for a specialized electronic toy manufacturer.

We prepared the original draft using a popular collaborative group editor, and one team member copied and pasted the current draft into a .doc file and emailed it out to the collaborating group for further review.

As it turns out, many changes were required to yield a presentable document, and I set to work correcting, using Microsoft Word’s Track Changes feature.  Two hours later, I was reasonably satisfied with my progress.

As I prepared to send the report back to the team, a message sat in my inbox with a new version of the report containing changes from two other teammates.  A few seconds later another version came in with page twenty-two almost entirely rewritten.

It wouldn’t do any good to submit my version of the report as is, so after I finished swearing under my breath, I emailed a warning to the group to stop editing and send me anything they had.  I undertook the painful process of merging the changes I had already made plus changes from my colleagues into the most recent version of the document.  Three hours later I had a more or less up to date document.

Time spent editing and merging: 5 hours
Total emails composed: 6
Outdated versions of the document: 4
People I wanted to sock: 4

I wish Backboard would have been available back then.  My teammate would have sent out his draft for review on Backboard and I would have spent time reviewing and indicating my requested changes.  So would the remainder of the group.  Once we had all voiced in, the original Backboard creator would run through the document once, updating it with suggested changes.

Time spend editing and merging: 2 hours
Total emails composed: 0
Outdated versions of the document: 0
People I wanted to sock: 0