Having witnessed this through a flood of incoming ex-Amazon folks I agree that it brings so much more content and focus on a meeting. It is amazing. The silence, the reading, the staying on topic (apart from tangents that sometimes need to be brought up, but are vulnerable to being just dismissed with the power of The Document) all helps to get the attention and feedback you need.
The thing is though, that while the article mentions briefly challenges with the writing, it does not shine light on the hours and hours or reviews, rewrites and re-reviews when preparing the document. The endless and often times pointless arguments and bad blood between people on how to write a sentence so that it would be "correct" and every word and number counts. Arguments if a given word should be "benefit" or "impact". If the word should be "system" or "solution". It does not feel productive and I am not sure if counting the hours spent would actually add up classical "hours wasted" in a typical 10 person "pointless meeting". And also when usually a piece of writing has some soul of the writer, in these documents they end up being soulless, blank format robotic texts only aiming to convincing the reader to fund your project or sell your idea over others. And that leads to quite an Amazonian culture that is a subject of many different articles.
I just felt there was something omitted by OP. So while it has benefits, it does have a cost associated.
The downsides sound a bit odd. The process as usually described seems like a single person usually writes the doc, often the person in charge of delivering the project? Why would there be much argument about the wording then? And if there is a duo or team, it sounds like the same rules as pull request / code reviews apply? Make sure it's objectively correct, then concise, and last stylish?
It varies on the attendees in the meeting and the length of the document. If it’s what is typically referred to as a “6 pager” the situation that parent outlined is certainly believable. Lots of collaboration with peers and your manager and weeks of refinement before that meeting.
Similar with the working backward process/PRFAQ. You might stop shopping it around when it’s just the answer to the 5 questions and an aspirational testimonial. By the time it’s a meeting reviewing the 1-2 page press release it’s likely been months of refinement.
That isn’t to say it’s a full time effort over that period though. These things are usually background/parallel work with whatever else you you’re doing.
The thing is though, that while the article mentions briefly challenges with the writing, it does not shine light on the hours and hours or reviews, rewrites and re-reviews when preparing the document. The endless and often times pointless arguments and bad blood between people on how to write a sentence so that it would be "correct" and every word and number counts. Arguments if a given word should be "benefit" or "impact". If the word should be "system" or "solution". It does not feel productive and I am not sure if counting the hours spent would actually add up classical "hours wasted" in a typical 10 person "pointless meeting". And also when usually a piece of writing has some soul of the writer, in these documents they end up being soulless, blank format robotic texts only aiming to convincing the reader to fund your project or sell your idea over others. And that leads to quite an Amazonian culture that is a subject of many different articles.
I just felt there was something omitted by OP. So while it has benefits, it does have a cost associated.