The concept of this specification was originated in the early 1980s as an aerospace standard. At that time, most civil airline projects were being documented in accordance with specification ATA 100 with military projects following various national specifications. Documentation Working Group (DWG) consisted of European industry representatives tasked to report on current documentation practices and to recommend a unified method of documentation for air vehicle projects. 

The DWG recognized that the only internationally accepted specification in the aerospace field was ATA 100. It was therefore decided to attempt to harmonize civil and military documentation using ATA 100 as a source document. The DWG invited the nations to provide military representatives who would participate in its activities and established a subsidiary, which was designated the Augmented Documentation Working Group (ADWG).

To ease reading of the specification it has been split into multiple chapters covering aspects such as creation, management and publishing, the full lifecycle of technical publications creation.