RE: most effective method for SME review?

["David Artman" <david -at- davidartman -dot- com>]

   At my firm, we have a mix of attentive SMEs: Some review same day as
   asked; some have never reviewed without my calling a meeting of the
   team and reading the document to them.

   So far, my most-effective approach is as follows (both FrameMaker and
   DITA, with minor tweaks to process):

   * FM: Put Index markers with info about what is changed on each change.
   [We do not make Indexes yet; if we did, I'd use a different marker
   type.]

     DITA: Put processing-instruction elements at all change locations and
   use a custom transform to generate a change log out of them, across a
   specified date range (i.e., each development-draft iteration, as
   tracked using critdate elements).

   * Apply New (blue-text) or Deleted (FM: red-strikeout-text; DITA:
   red-background-text) conditions (or rev attributes triggered by a
   ditaval file) to highlight the changes at those locations.

   * Generate a List of Markers (or the aforementioned change log) at the
   front of the development draft, with hyperlinks to each marker (or
   processing-instruction).

   * Send to Adobe Shared Review to track comments.

   * Integrate changes in next draft; comment out previous draft's Deleted
   markup; and repeat.

   I usually have to prod SMEs after a week or so to get on with it. I'm
   authorized to employ The Meeting ThreatA(R) to encourage folks to
   review promptly ("No one has clicked into the review, so I'm scheduling
   a team review meeting for three hours. If, of course, folks review
   before the meeting, it will take far less time because we'll only have
   to address unclear comments and markup."). It has about a 50% efficacy
   at prompting folks to Just Do It. Of course, folks who like to burn up
   their hours in meetings love them. Can't win 'em all....

   Hope this helps;

   David

   -------- Original Message --------
   Subject: most effective method for SME review?
   From: Tom Johnson <[1]tomjohnson1492 -at- gmail -dot- com>
   Date: Wed, October 21, 2015 8:12 pm
   To: TECHWR-L <[2]techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
   What has been your most effective method for reviewing docs with
   subject
   matter experts? I feel like I've tried everything and haven't really
   hit
   upon the best way of doing it.

References

   1. mailto:tomjohnson1492 -at- gmail -dot- com
   2. mailto:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
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