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David Downing asked why SMEs are willing to participate in review
meetings when they seldom (or never) provide feedback when
sent a review copy of a document.
In my experience, SMEs seldom do much preparation (i.e. reviewing or
even simply reading the document) in advance of a review meeting.
Most wind up reading page by page during the meeting and commenting
in real time. In this mode of operation, their total investment of time
is the length of the meeting itself, as opposed to the multiple hours it
would take them to properly read, review, and comment on a copy
that was sent to them for review. No question that this is a more
attractive proposition for them even if it leads to a less thorough
review of the document for you.
And on the rare occasions when the SMEs did do a read-through before
the review meeting, it's still hard to cover more than the first 30 pages
in a 60-90 minute meeting, which means multiple meetings with ever-
decreasing participation and commitment if you're dealing with longer
documents.
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