We tend to think about BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) as freeing the company from expensive software, and freeing employees to select the device and software that works best for them. Individuals can use desktop PCs, laptops, tablets, or smartphones. They can use Microsoft Office or LibreOffice -- or some other tool that lets them exchange files with the team.
One aspect that has been given little thought is upgrades.
Software changes over time. Vendors release new versions. (So do open source projects.)
An obvious question is: How does an organization coordinate changes to new versions?
But the question is not about software.
The real question is: How does an organization coordinate changes to file formats?
Traditional (that is, non-BYOD) shops distribute software to employees. The company buys software licenses and deploys it. Large companies have teams dedicated to this task. In general, everyone has the same version of software. Software is selected by a standards committee, or the office administrator. The file formats "come along for the ride".
With BYOD, the organization must pick the file formats and the employees pick the software.
An organization needs agreement for the exchange of documents. There must be agreement for the project files for development teams. (Microsoft Visual Studio has one format, the Eclipse IDE has another.) A single individual cannot enforce their choice upon the organization.
For an organization that supports BYOD, think about the formats of information. That standards committee that has nothing to do now that BYOD has been implemented? Assign them the task of file format standardization.
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