RE: Review techniques (was Re: lead time...)

[Lisa Matheson <lisamath -at- microsoft -dot- com>]

Another good addition to final review cover sheets are check boxes and
signature lines, and offer free food to people who return on time.  My check
boxes:

[ ]  Ok to release as is.
[ ]  Ok to release with marked changes.
[ ]  Need second review after changes are made.
[ ]  Feature not complete.

Then, I have several key people's signatures on review forms that say the
doc is okay to release.  It encourages people to be reasonably thorough.

You can also call out areas where significant changes have been made since
the earlier review, and specifically ask people to look at those areas in
particular.

To encourage more thorough reviewing on earlier reviews, I give free food to
people who return the review, on time, with at least one technical
inaccuracy (no typos, etc.)  Not only does this encourage people to look
deeper, but it also indicates to the reviewers that I'm expecting there to
be errors and won't have my feelings hurt if they find one.

Lisa

-----Original Message-----
From: Jane Bergen [mailto:jane -dot- bergen -at- usa -dot- net]
Sent: Friday, December 08, 2000 12:05 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Review techniques (was Re: lead time...)


Cayenne,

One thing you might try is to attach a cover letter to the document you
send to review. In this cover letter, specify exactly what you want/don't
want comments on. I usually tell the reviewers that this is the "first
draft" or "near final draft" etc. If it's the first draft, I tell them to
ignore minor typos, etc. and to instead concentrate on missing
information, missing procedures, etc. If it's a final draft, I might
mention that it's too late to make any MAJOR changes like format, fonts,
color choices, and that I'd prefer they'd just review for completeness,
accuracy, and clarity. You might even give them a checklist.

Very few people can be intuitive enough to really cover everything, so I
try to be selective in who reviews what. For example, on my earliest
drafts, I ask the engineers to review the document (mostly for accuracy
and completeness). On my final draft, I only ask the better reviewers (who
are now quite obvious since your documents have been reviewed by several
people) to review for consistency, accuracy, and the
last-minute-sanity-check. It works pretty well. I have almost always
worked as the lone tech writer. On the one occasion when I did have
another writer, I really let her know I appreciated it when she did the
tech-writer sanity check. Unfortunately, we were moving at the speed of
light and it was seldom that she had time.

Jane

> "Cayenne Woods" wrote...
> Also, after asking for feedback since early November and not getting
even a
> reply, a new project manager has kicked everyone into gear to review the
> docs.
> However, they received absolutely no guidelines on what I'd like to
hear, and
> now have sent _lots_ of feedback. I should get over the opinions on
colors,
> fonts, capitalisation, etc, but it's irritating. The big problem is
there's
> way too much detail for this stage - and even though I'd ignore half the
> "suggestions" and many are simply wrong, it's a big chunk of both their
and
> my time that is not best-used at this point.


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