The Document Life Cycle

It is important for the project manager to recognize the stages that a document must go through from creation to completion. This knowledge allows the project manager to understand the overall status of a document at any given time and helps ensure adequate time is allocated for the completion of the document. For instance, when a team member says they can complete a document in two weeks, are they saying that the document will be ready to circulate in two weeks or that the document will be completed and totally approved in two weeks? Not all documents need to go through all the stages of document creation and approval. However, depending on the document, one or more of the steps will be required.

Some of the review steps defined here would also be considered part of a quality control process for the documents.




Role


The Document Life Cycle


Plan the document

Sometimes you can sit down and just start writing your document. Other times you need to prepare and plan. This is especially true as your document gets larger and more complex. In many cases you are not able to start writing because you do not have your thoughts structured. Preparation and planning, which includes outlining the content and structuring the sections, will help you get started.


Create the initial document draft

In this step, the document draft is created. If there are no subsequent reviews and approvals, this step results in the creation of the final deliverable. Most of the effort associated with the document is used in this step. Subsequent steps may take a long duration, but they do not take nearly as much effort.


Circulate document for feedback and modify as appropriate

These two steps involve circulating the document for initial review and feedback. The document is updated based on the review comments. Depending on the particular document, this may be an iterative step. A document may have an internal review, followed by a stakeholder review, followed by a management review. After each of these reviews, the document is subsequently modified based in the feedback and sent to the next step.



Gain document approval

When the document has been circulated for feedback and subsequently updated, it will be ready for final approval. Some documents should be formally approved in writing. Others are simply considered complete after the final round of feedback is received.

Like all completed (production) deliverables there may be subsequent updates or enhancements that may require their own mini-document life cycle as well.

Transition Documents to the Right Area After the Project

After the project has completed, some of the documents may be archived, while others need to be maintained indefinitely. For instance, project Status Reports can be archived (or purged) when the project has completed, since they are time-sensitive and have limited value after the project is completed. On the other hand, you should save a User’s Manual after the project is completed. These saved documents can continue to be updated in the document repository if the repository is something that is utilized by the entire organization. Otherwise these long-term documents will need to be moved to the document repository used by the support team.

Some companies maintain a central repository of major project deliverables that can be leveraged for reuse. For instance, the Business Requirements document that was created for your project may be able to be leveraged by another project that is looking into a similar business area. The Testing Strategy your project defined may be able to be reused by another project with similar testing needs. After your project has ended, the project manager and librarian should determine the information that can be leveraged on future projects if the organization has a repository where the documents can be saved.