meaning & practice of a "doc freeze"

["stacy naus" <snaus2003 -at- msn -dot- com>]

Does anyone out there use a "documentation freeze" approach in their doc 
development/production strategy?

My understanding/practice is that a "doc freeze" is much like a code freeze; 
no new content or changes are accepted from the Subject Matter 
Experts/developers.  BUT if we go with that definition, then the practice is 
this: during doc freeze, you are then still making revisions (due to the 
fact that revisions were submitted up until the date of the freeze).

So my question is, once you have produced a "final" after the freeze date, 
do you then submit the final back to the SMEs or developers?  I ask because 
if I do this, they still want to make changes.  So why should we submit a 
"final" to them at all at that point?  Why not just call it done & send it 
to the release cycle?  And if the SME's/Developers want to see the final, 
they can look at it in PDF format on the network.  The rest of the 
development team misunderstands the meaning of "doc freeze" if they believe 
they can still have input to the doc after that.  So what are your 
practices?  To submit, or not to submit, a final after the "freeze"?

Comments?

Thanks!
 

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