Who is running which version of a tool

Once a tool has been handed out, one question remains: who is running which copy. This page is about how that knowledge is lost, and why nobody notices it is gone for months.

How the drift unfolds

What follows is not an account of a single incident; it is the mechanism itself, and it runs the same way wherever versions drift. Nobody makes a mistake at any step.

Day one
The tool reaches everyone at the same moment. This is the only day you know that everyone is running the same version.
The first fix
A bug turns up, the author fixes it in ten minutes and shares the new copy. Two people who are on leave that day are still on the old one — and they do not know it either, because the tool keeps working for them too.
A few months on
A handful of further fixes accumulate. Three different versions are now in circulation and nothing records which one sits where. Everyone gets a consistent result on their own machine.
Before a deadline
Two engineers run the same tool on the same drawing and get different results. Suspicion falls on the drawing first, then on the settings; the tool is the last thing anyone thinks of.
Once the cause is found
What was lost is not only the time spent looking for it: there is also no assurance that it will not happen again. The mechanism that produced the drift is still in place.

Why it goes unnoticed for months

Drift makes no noise. There are three reasons, and all three come from the shape of the arrangement itself.

Every machine is consistent with itself

The old version is not broken, only old. It turns the same input into the same output every time and raises no warning. The engineer sees nothing wrong on their own screen — because nothing is wrong, something is different.

The difference is in the output, not the tool

Drift shows up when two results are placed side by side, not when the tool loads. And two engineers running the same tool on the same drawing and comparing the output is not part of the ordinary working day.

There is no record to ask

If the answer to “who has which version” were written down somewhere, the question could be asked. A network share, an email and a hands-on install produce no such record; the answer can only be collected machine by machine.

What this product does about it

Every package carries a version number and a signature; who received which version is recorded on the server and can be asked without walking round the machines. Updates travel on their own, so there is no such thing as missing the message. If a version causes trouble it can be rolled back — and the rollback reaches everyone the same way.

See how it works, in five steps

See it with your own tools

The demo takes an hour and uses your tools; not knowing how many versions are in circulation is not a problem. The pilot installation is free.

Request a demo