Document Life Cycle

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The life cycle of a document was clearly delimited as long as the process of creation was mainly individual. Since the web, collaboration has blured the life cycle of documents by insiting on the way it is created, instead of stressing on the way it live

Document creation: the first phase of the life cycle

What computer brought to knowledge management is of course the possibility to edit, reuse, transfer documents. But another value must be added: for the first time a very ancient project is achieved: the possibility to organise all the words and there relations into one single, big, representation and manipulate this collection. Instead of creating a dictionary, accessed entry by entry, a simple student can organise thousands of concepts and build automatic sentences. Such a power has an immediate impact on the way we must now consider documents. The question cannot be the type of document as it was before internet, it cannot be the question of where it is and who can acces it as it was the case a few ago: the question is the document produced.

Knowledge Management was introduced by inventoring all the words of any specific working field: words for the tools used, words for the actions carried out by workers, words for the different actors in the field (individuals, or social entities). By working at such a low level (the words) in a systematic way, another point of view on documents starts to exist. A link can be created from the simple collection of words, to the document. The document can be described by an organisation of the ideas, or by the explicitation of relations between these ideas.

Why is this so important in the life cycle of documents ? The answer is simple: because if we let out of the frame the end the beginning of the document, we loose also the end of it: what is its impact! If a corporate is by design, a compound of power relations, of economic and strategic goals, of productions (intellectual or not), of conceptions, the end of a document can only be described by the impact on these different objects. This is how "reuse" should be eventually be understood: a document is used when it has modified the discourse inside the organisation.

The different kind of modifications A document can create new words. It can introduce inside the field of the organisation concept which where not yet used. A document, can analyse situations, emphasize risks, define order in the way deductions are made inside the corporate.

Date:2009/12/25