Do I need to jump into the Structured FM pool?

[Lin Surasky]

Or can I keep my inflatable ducky hiked firmly around my middle and
paddle around in unstructured FM?
 
Over the past year or so, I've been poking around at structured FM with
no real goal in mind except to see if it might benefit us down the road.
For the most part, our process is pretty linear, and structured FM isn't
yet necessary for our regular user guides and manuals. So I have a
general idea of what we'd need, but I don't have the full picture yet...
 
I'm working on a new product with a new team, and each customer gets
their own version of the product with their own customized release
notes. When you all have stopped screaming, I'll continue... The release
notes are very simple. There are three main chapters: Requested Customer
Enhancements, Bug Fixes, and Known Issues (bugs that we're aware of that
have not yet been fixed). Please don't start screaming again; I really
need your advice! The gist of the situation is that on release day, I
have to go into our bug reporting system, and check all the Known Issues
to make sure they're still issues. If they've been fixed, they move to
the Bug Fixes section.
 
So I'm thinking that structured FM must be able to help, in that I could
somehow create element tags for Fixes and Issues, and then just change
the element tag for the Issues that have been fixed and somehow
regenerate the documents (how, I don't know -- do I need to maintain
this in a spreadsheet or database?) so that the content is moved to the
correct section along with its cross-referenced bullet (each section has
a bulleted list to make navigation easier). Oh yeah, and can they be
re-sorted by section into numerical order?
 
This sounds like it should be so simple, but I'm lost on the mechanics
-- any recommendations for how to set this up? Or if there's a better
way to manage this even in unstructured FM, that'd be great too. The
cutting and pasting is REALLY not my idea of fun!
 
Thanks!
Lin