Map authors need to be able to assign and remove publish rights with co-editors

While I appreciate the logic in preserving control, avoiding conflicting versions, etc., the problem it creates is that in a highly empowered, collaborative team, responsibilities are shared with other team members, and the author of a map often may not be attending a team work session or readily available to update the publish after the work session.

As an example, I have a very comprehensive map of a small business that includes strategic planning, core operating processes, and process management team (PMT) work sessions. There are six PMTs for this business, and each has a facilitator. One of the most valuable aspects of MM is its ability to show the big picture - we do not want to create separate or linked maps for each PMT. Publishing the entire map allows all members of the company to easily view the full set of activities going on with all of the PMTs. But the PMTs meet on different schedules, so each time a PMT meets and does work on the map, we need to update the published map. It is impractical for the map author to have to be notified to update the published map every time a PMT completes a work session.

I think there is a compromise that preserves the ability to limit the risk of loss of control, yet enables teams to eliminate this bottleneck. That would be simply to add a feature that enables the map author to assign and remove one or more other team members the authority to update the map. In the case above, I would empower each of the six PMT facilitators to update the publish. As the map author, I mitigate most of the risk by frequently (almost daily) saving a dated backup of the map, just in case anyone accidentally deletes anything on the map.