As much as Scope Change Control is important to running a project smoothly, so too is having version control of the documents used on the project. Recently I was in a meeting with eight people, and we were all looking at a WBS done in MS Project. The problem was that the manager running the meeting failed to ask for a specific version to be used at the meeting, so three versions of the same document were being used at the same time.
It didn't take very long to ascertain that there were different versions, and the meeting leader made a good decision when she had all the documents collected, copied the latest version, and distributed it to everybody at the meeting. All of us were on the same page (literally), and the meeting ran well.
This incident highlights several issues. First, several versions of documents will be created during the course of a project. It is necessary to change the version number every time the content changes. So it is possible to have several versions of a single document going on at the same time, particularly when the changes made to the document are coming fast and furious. Second, when a meeting is being held, the chair of the meeting (in many cases the project manager) should specify the version number to be discussed at the meeting.
When this type of control is first implemented in an organization, many people fail to understand the importance of version control. Much like with Scope Change Control, small incremental changes are left out at the beginning of an organization's attempts at project management techniques and processes. But just like Scope Change Control, version change control will be a great help in the Controlling Phase of the project. This is particularly true when you are using documents in meetings. You will be getting the latest information to various people on the project team, which they can discuss with confidence.
After a document is finalized in the project plan, it should be locked down under version control. That is, the baseline form of the document is version 1.0. Any changes, repeat, any changes made in the document from that time on warrant a version change. This may seem like much ado about nothing, but as with scope creep, you will have "version creep" if you do not note all changes. It is very hard to inculcate this technique into an organization when its people are accustomed to version creep.