The Content Lifecycle

Every piece of knowledge has a lifecycle: it begins as a draft, goes through review, gets published, requires ongoing maintenance, eventually becomes outdated, and is either updated or deprecated. Governance without a defined lifecycle produces content that lives forever in an unknown state — published and visible but potentially wrong, with no mechanism to surface the problem and no owner with the authority to resolve it.

The lifecycle is not bureaucracy. It is the mechanism that distinguishes a knowledge base from an archive of uncertain accuracy.

1. Draft Content in draft is visible only to the author and designated reviewers. It is not searchable by general users. Draft status has a maximum age: drafts older than 30 days without activity are flagged to the author. Drafts older than 60 days without activity are escalated to the domain steward. A draft that never moves to review is content debt that never matures into content value.
2. Review Submitted for review means the author has declared the content ready for publication. The domain steward or designated reviewer has 5 business days to approve, request revision, or reject. Review is not copy editing — it is accuracy and completeness verification. The reviewer asks: is this technically correct? Are all required schema fields populated? Does this conflict with existing content? Is this the right home for this content?
3. Published Published content is visible to all users with read access. The publication date is recorded. The next review date is automatically calculated based on content type (runbook: 90 days, article: 180 days, decision record: 365 days). The author and domain steward both receive notifications when the review date approaches. Publication is not the end of the lifecycle — it is the start of the maintenance cycle.
4. Maintain Periodic review confirms that published content remains accurate. Maintenance edits do not require full re-review for minor changes (typo corrections, link updates). Substantive changes to procedures, decisions, or factual claims require re-review. A maintenance edit resets the review clock. An item that has been reviewed and confirmed accurate without changes also resets the clock — "reviewed, no changes" is a valid maintenance action.
5. Deprecate Deprecation marks content as no longer recommended for use. It remains visible but with a prominent deprecation notice: what replaced it, why it was deprecated, and when. Deprecated content is removed from search results by default but remains accessible by direct URL. Deprecation window: 90 days. After 90 days, the content is archived.
6. Archive Archived content is removed from all navigation and search surfaces. It exists in the archive for audit trail, legal hold, and historical reference purposes. Archived content can be restored by a knowledge admin if a legitimate retrieval need is identified. Archive is not deletion: deletion is a one-way door that knowledge governance should never use for authored content.