Feature Focus: Draft Review
Applying the principles of code review to your creative process
As we have discussed in the past, before building Chipmunk, we tried different ways of managing our own creative projects. Some were overly complex, others weren’t robust enough, and while we liked the features of some, we found that no single product did everything we needed. Though appealing, we found features like GitHub’s code review and version control unnecessarily technical and difficult to implement for our projects that didn’t involve code. We heard (and continue to hear) this exact same feedback nearly unanimously from every team that works with visual assets. Similarly, we found solutions that helped centralize our assets and maintain a creative library, but they lacked the features we wanted for managing the workflow of creating new content. Since creation and curation go hand in hand, we set out to build something better, keeping in mind the concepts that worked well.
Since our team has a background of working on software projects in addition to visual ones, we looked first to software development methodologies as a source of best practices. Code review is used in the quality assurance process to identify potential problems, keep teams on the same page, and reduce errors. We loved this idea and worked hard to find a way to incorporate these practices into our workflow for non-code projects.
Introducing Draft Review
Using the principles of git and git flow as our basis, we set out to develop our own practice that would be effective for design and marketing projects. We liked the idea of a workflow where users could upload works in progress or propose changes to existing content, allowing stakeholders to weigh in. These drafts could then be approved or rejected, pinpointing specific aspects of the asset that need work. Automatically tracking the history of changes made to the asset appealed to us as well, since it enabled us to see the evolution of our content or review previously approved versions at any time. This became Draft Workflow, a feature we’re very proud of and have discussed at length.
Today, we’re proud to announce Draft Review. Built into Draft Workflow, Draft Review will implement the same ideas behind code review, but is created specifically for the unique challenges of creative projects that aren’t based on code. With Draft Review, it’s possible to examine individual drafts, leave comments as changes are needed, and easily annotate an asset to show exactly what changes are needed. When an asset is ready for stakeholders to weigh in, assign the draft to whomever is responsible and they’ll have the ability to approve or reject, leaving comments as necessary.
Chipmunk is our team’s home for the creative process. We love its flexibility and it truly is the best solution we’ve found for managing our own creative projects. We’re very proud of what we’ve built so far. The journey isn’t over, though. It’s a work in progress and we continue to grow and improve Chipmunk with feedback from our users and our own team as we use it every day. Draft Review takes Chipmunk to the next level and we’re excited to bring this feature to the other teams out here who we know are looking for it. You can expect another blog soon with more details on Draft Review and we’ll be releasing the feature early in 2019.
Want to be first to experience Draft Review? Sign up for a free Chipmunk account today!
