Documents Considered Harmful

The more BA work I do the more I realise that our basic tools aren't well suited to how most people develop software. Documents are far too static, un-collaborative, and unlinked, while the big integrated suites are way too big and integrated to be useful in most environments.

I've had some success in the past using Wikis and Issue Tracking software for requirements, design, and testing, but this has problems of its own - especially when it comes time for sign-off and communicating with people who want a concrete document to read and sign off (like me). True you can get a documetn out of a Wiki, but it's normally a schlep and the result is fugly.

I guess I'd be fully sold on Wiki route if you could:

• Easily put together document from a set of pages at a set point in time and retain it as a project artefact.
• Make the resulting page pretty (Would outputting to LaTeX and from there to PDF be so hard?)
• Track Sign-Off across multiple pages

You've really got to put as thoguht into setting up your Wiki structure, and how you'll use issue tracking - but more on that later.