The process of producing documents is an iterative process involving drafting, checking, and revising the document. It should continue until a...

One should
begin with some sense of what a document needs to be. Perhaps a document is being prepared for a
customer or a boss. Alternatively, a document might be the kind of standard report that is
regularly produced internal to a business. From this, one should be able to determine the
characteristics necessary for the final product: does it need to be formal, or is informal
writing sufficient? What length should it be? How should it be formatted?

From here, if the document needs to be high-quality and one is not familiar with
writing documents of this type, it would make sense to review similar high-quality
documents.

Following this, many find it helpful to write an
outline.

From an outline, it makes sense to write a full draft.

The draft should be reviewed and edited as many times as needed, until the author feels
confident in it or hits a dead end.

At this point, if needed, it would make
sense to send the document to someone else to review.

Upon receiving comments
from the reviewer, the author can return to anywhere in this process. Ideally, only light
editing is needed, but in some cases, going back to the literature review or outlining stages
may prove best.