Five Files, No Record of Which Came First

Five different files were created during a project, but nobody can remember which file was made first or why certain decisions were made. The files include a research document, a spreadsheet of data, a draft slide deck, a sketch of the app interface, and a chat log discussing the pivot of the pricing model. The team is working on the project without a clear understanding of its history.

When researching the market, an AI assistant was used to summarize competitor pricing. The table provided by the AI was copied into a note and later into a Google Doc. The reasoning behind the chosen competitors and the data sources behind the table is stored in the chat, which is no longer accessible. When asked about the pricing decision, the team would have to reconstruct the logic from memory or search through multiple conversations.

Midweek, a product spec document was finalized and included in the draft slide deck for a leadership review. However, two days later, the document was updated to remove a feature after discussing with engineering. The slide deck still contained the outdated feature, causing confusion during the review when the discrepancy was pointed out.

A spreadsheet with the revenue model was built on Wednesday, referencing growth assumptions from the same chat as the market summary. However, the spreadsheet has its own version of the growth rate, which was manually inputted due to incorrect memory. Different sources, including the document, deck, and spreadsheet, provide different growth rates, making it difficult to determine which one is accurate.

On Friday, the prototype for the app began, with UI mockups in a design tool, backend logic in a separate text file, and database schema in another app. Each component lives in its own silo with its own login and export format. To verify if the prototype matches the spec, the team has to open three windows and compare the elements by eye.

Any changes require editing one piece and manually syncing it to the others. If the user flow is altered, the mockup needs to be updated, and the backend description must be rewritten from scratch. There is no shared memory across the tools, and each step starts from scratch.

To improve the project workflow, it is recommended to consider carrying the project's history alongside the final output within a single shared space. This would help avoid confusion, rework, and lost context by ensuring that each piece of work knows what came before it.