If I had to explain then, I would start with "If you had the ability to undo all the mistakes that you did since you were born, wouldn't you be confident enough to try something new? Now apply that for code, you'll be able to try new stuff hoping that all working code is backed up and you can fix things if something goes wrong."
Your manager might reply asking you to backup code for the above statement. I would continue "Imagine that you are not sure about something goes wrong with your life, you won't know until that happens. Now unless you have ability to rewind stuff and fix things, you'd be in trouble, that's what version control does to projects, it prevents you from getting into problems." If manager still doesn't get convinced, I'll ask him/her to play Prince of Persia game:P
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If I had to explain then, I would start with "If you had the ability to undo all the mistakes that you did since you were born, wouldn't you be confident enough to try something new? Now apply that for code, you'll be able to try new stuff hoping that all working code is backed up and you can fix things if something goes wrong." Your manager might reply asking you to backup code for the above statement. I would continue "Imagine that you are not sure about something goes wrong with your life, you won't know until that happens. Now unless you have ability to rewind stuff and fix things, you'd be in trouble, that's what version control does to projects, it prevents you from getting into problems." If manager still doesn't get convinced, I'll ask him/her to play Prince of Persia game :P