Taken directly from Microsoft Technet at http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/15e6e3a3-9d35-47af-b287-13aec95d247e1033.mspx?mfr=true

The document management planning process consists of the following major steps:

1. Identify document management roles Ensure that your plans incorporate the feedback of your organization's key stakeholders, that you have the right team in place to implement the solution, and that you know who will participate in document management processes.

2. Analyze document usage After you identify who works on documents, determine the types of documents they work on and how they will be used.

3. Plan the organization of documents You can organize documents in libraries, team sites, and portal sites. Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers a range of document organizing and storing features, from specialized sites such as the Records Repository to free-form document libraries for ad-hoc document creation and collaboration. Within a library, you can further organize content into folders and subfolders.

4. Plan how content moves between locations It may be necessary to move or copy a document from one site or library to another at different stages of its life cycle. For example, the publishing process may include moving a document from a staging site to a public Internet site. If content needs to be converted from one format to another as it moves from site to site, you will also want to plan content conversions.

5. Plan content types Use content types to organize information about types of documents, such as metadata, document templates, policies, and workflow processes. This is an essential step to help you organize your documents and enforce consistency across your organization.

6. Plan content control You can plan the appropriate degree of control for each content type and storage location. For example, for a document library you can plan to require check-in and check-out and to protect documents from unauthorized distribution by using Information Rights Management.

7. Plan workflows By planning workflows for your organization, you can control and track how documents move from one team member to another as each participant collaborates in a document's life cycle. Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes workflows for common team tasks such as reviewing and approving documents. Office SharePoint Server 2007 also supports creating and installing custom workflows.

8. Plan policies For each content type, plan information management policies to ensure that documents are properly audited, retained, labeled, and otherwise handled according to your organization's institutional and legal requirements. Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes policies that implement auditing, document retention, labeling, and barcodes (to ensure that printed content can be correlated with corresponding versions in document libraries)