January 14, 2008

Jonathan Bailor

In this story, inspired by true events, this week's columnists teaches us about how Document Protection and Information Rights Management (IRM) enabled collaboration among a wide variety of people working on a project.

Once upon a time there was a Program Manager (PM) who wrote a specification (spec) on a new Word feature. Before his spec could get marked "ready for coding," this PM needed a bunch of stakeholders to review and approve it. Specifically, he needed approval from the developers who would code the feature, the testers who would test it, the external contractor who would do a little of everything related to it, and the managers who would explain it to executives.

Hoping to have the document in a good state before anyone external or above him saw it, PM sought the feedback of the developers (dev) and testers (test) first.

Knowing that dev generally reads specifications quickly to "get the main idea" and then later refers back to them for answers to specific questions while coding, PM knew that dev would likely provide the best feedback via higher level "comments" on the spec. To help scope the dev feedback, the PM used Document Protection to enable dev to add comments and only comments to the spec.

Thanks to "protecting the document for comments," dev knew exactly what PM needed and PM got exactly what he wanted.

Next, PM needed testers to do what they do best: scrutinize the spec and find every possible problem. To enable test to do this in such a way that was manageable for PM, PM again called on Document Protection. This time, he wanted to ensure that any and every change made by test would be marked up as a tracked change.

Thanks to "protecting the document for tracked changes," test knew exactly what PM needed and PM got exactly what he wanted.

But, while PM, dev, and test pranced merrily around their offices celebrating the progress of the spec, a dark force crept out from the shadows: the deadline. Soon, awareness of the deadline spread throughout the halls and PM realized that he had time for only one more review loop. Sadly, PM also realized that during this single review loop he needed:

• Management and a external contractor to provide detailed feedback.
• Dev and test to read the spec to ensure their feedback was incorporated correctly.

In other words, PM faced the review loop perfect storm: looming deadline and multiple reviewers, with multiple roles, both in and out of the organization.

With fear in his heart but hope in his soul, PM consulted with the organizational elders about his situation. He told them that he needed a way to ensure that:

• Only managers and the contractor could edit the document.
• He could quickly find and act on all of these edits.
• Nobody outside of the organization other than the contractor could open the document.
• Dev and test could read the document.

Undaunted, the elders advised PM that by combining the powers of Information Rights Management (IRM) and Document Protection, he could beat the evil deadline.

With a new sense of resolve, PM:

• Used the powers of IRM to grant dev and test read access and to grant his managers Sean and Travis as well as the external contractor read/write access to the spec.
  
  
• Used the powers of Document Protection to specify that all edits made by Sean, Travis, and the external contractor were marked up using change tracking.
  
  
• Sent out a copy of the specification out as email attachment and defeated the deadline!

All of the managers and the contractor were able to edit the document in a way that was easy for PM to act on, and dev and test were able to give the document a final look over.

PM easily integrated all feedback, marked his specification "ready for coding," and they all lived happily ever after.

The end.

About the author

Jonathan Bailor is a program manager on the Office Word team at Microsoft. Over the past three years he has worked on a variety of projects with the Word and Live Search teams, including the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats, the Office Open XML file format, the Word Team's Blog, and Internet search relevancy. When he's not at Microsoft, you can often find Jonathan at the local athletic club or library.