Retention schedules provide a structured framework for identifying an organization's official records and documenting its record-keeping policies, requirements, and obligations. Traditional retention schedules were often organized by department and contained hundreds, if not thousands, of record series with a dizzying array of time and event based retention periods.

The complexity of modern business processes and the widespread use of electronic information systems to create and store business records, however, have made it difficult for organizations to consistently apply granular retention schedules at the level of the record series. Professionals outside the discipline of records management who are now engaged in developing strategies for information life-cycle controls (including technologists, information architects, legal/compliance professionals, as well as third-party suppliers and vendors) are often at a loss to understand the rationale for so many retention categories.

"Big bucket theory" asserts that applying appraisal criteria to multiple similar or related groupings of information results in fewer, more uniform retention periods. Selecting from significantly fewer retention categories or "buckets" improves the ability of a user or a record-keeping system to accurately and consistently apply retention and disposition rules to recorded information.