Documentation, how much?

The never ending battle --- How much documentation should we produce? If you have deep methodologies, or extended, i.e., "mature" (??) practices, you are almost always bound by extensive documentation mandates.  This is further complicated by contracts, audit requirements such as SarBox, and some maturity models, such as CMMI and OPM3.

But fortunately, the tide is beginning to turn.  Newer methods and frameworks are lessening the demand.   Concepts like Lean and Agile are breaking the mold on the definition of necessary, frequency, size and content.   None are proposing abandonment, but rather rethink, and minimization.

The challenge, though, is how to change the minds of those governing bodies, management, process ingrained staff members.  Is this change managment?  How do we even begin?  I for one, am definitely in favor of documentation reduction.  I have seen extensive efforts, and along with that, large costs, spent, fully for the sake of producing a document that solely sits on a shelf, figuratively, phsically, or electronically.

Here is a link to another article of similar nature:  http://pmtips.net/documentation/