Andy Oram has written a great article about community documentation entitled Rethinking Community Documentation.

Andy gives a great overview of what community documentation is, why people are willing to contribute, and what some of the problems are.

The thing that struck me the most was this:

Much of this documentation is:Fast-changing - No published book could keep up with the evolution of software, particularly software distributed over the Internet. In fact, many important developments become old hat before a book or magazine publisher could even solicit and publish an article on them. This is why wikis are popular; they can tack and turn along with the software.

Andy is writing about software, but I think he could just as easily be talking about any fast changing environment, including any company that attempts to achieve constant innovation and improvement.

A few months ago, Signal Vs. Noise pointed out the Wikipedia article on Kaizen, which means constant improvement:

The “zen” in Kaizen emphasizes the learn-by-doing aspect of improving production. This philosophy is focused in a different direction from the “command-and-control” improvement programs of the mid-20th century. Kaizen methodology includes making changes and looking at the results, then adjusting. Large-scale preplanning and extensive project scheduling are replaced by smaller experiments in improvement, which can be rapidly adapted as new improvements are suggested.

Learn by doing. Aim for constant innovation. This is what any CEO wants to hear.

But in a Sarbanes Oxley world, where process must be locked down, and constantly documented, how can you achieve the business objective of perfect documentation?

The answer is to use documentation tools that have all the audit and change control features you need, while affording you absolute flexibility.

Using a product like SocialText to build community documentation is a perfect way to achieve both goals. SocialText based documentation can be altered instantly but it is also controlled. SocialText has an LDAP compatible access control system and it keeps an audit trail of every edit, and who made those edits. That is more secure than any MSWord based documentation. And it is searchable, linkable, and by its very nature, it is easily made available to a wide audience, even if it is only an internal audience kept safely behind the corporate fire wall.

As Andy Oram says, the result is fast changing documentation; fast enough to keep up with the pace of today’s businesses.