A system and method to maintain versions of an object for each lifecycle stage of the object are described. The system maintains versions and archives of objects in memory. The system includes an object repository to maintain new objects. The system has a lifecycle stage module to manage lifecycle stages, an origin matrix builder to build origin matrices, an archive version manager to manage archives. The system further retrieves usages of objects across lifecycle stages using a usage logic module and compares the content of objects from different stages using a comparison module.