A special case of this practice is distinguishing records (that need not to be updated) from documents (that have to be updated).

A record is a representation that stores the information of an event. The information is immutable and therefore does not need to get updated. The maintenance costs of records is therefore very low or zero. The determination which pages are records and which are not is the most important application of this practice.

Documents contain information that needs to be updated. The cost of a document is therefore not only the cost of creating it initially. The stakeholder in need of the information provided by the document has to take care of maintenance costs that arise due to required updates. Documents have different frequencies of change, therefore some documents have higher maintenance costs than others.

It is sometimes quite difficult to determine the frequency of change for a document in advance. Therefore it is easier to think in these categories:

1. Documents that never change (records)
2. Documents that regularly change (automatically generated documents)
3. Documents that change less frequently
4. Documents that change frequently

Try to minimize documents in category four by turning them into records or by trying to generate them from artifacts (automation)Documents contain information that needs to be updated. The cost of a document is therefore not only the cost of creating it initially. The stakeholder in need of the information provided by the document has to take care of maintenance costs that arise due to required updates. Documents have different frequencies of change, therefore some documents have higher maintenance costs than others.