Re: Document Review Process

[Wanda Phillips <wanda -at- writelivelihood -dot- com>]

I feel particularly able to answer this question, having just written 
our formal review process!
First, we're a regulated industry, so we have had a structure to our 
review process that satisfies our regulatory requirements. We're in the 
process of integrating two companies (how unusual, eh?) and we needed to 
integrate the two review processes into one.
That said, here is our final process:
1. Writers produce a PDF version of the document and distribute it to 
engineers (SMEs), end-user reps, and regulatory folks. Occasionally, we 
include the lawyers, but rarely as they tend to request changes that 
make it less of a user document and more of a cya.
2. Reviewers, given a period of time considered sufficient for them to 
include the review in their work processes and keeping the entire 
document development process within the product schedule, use Acrobat 
tools to mark their comments in the document. They return their FDF layers.

   If the comments are significant, controversial, or result in a
   change of scope during the revision, we do a second review process,
   but, generally, we target a single review cycle. We also track the
   contributions from SMEs from the data collection part of the
   document development process.

3. The writer combines all the FDF layers into a single PDF and uses 
that as the master review copy for updating the document. Writers 
acknowledge their responses to comments by initialling the original 
comments, and adding notes where necessary.
4. An editor edits the contents and reviews the master PDF to ensure 
that all comments are addressed.
And there you go. Sometimes, SMEs request a sign-off copy, and they are 
generally the SMEs from one group, one of the former companies where the 
review process included a final sign-off to approve the integration of 
comments. That company did not have writers employed but used 
contractors; there was a much lower level of trust.
HTH, YMMV
wanda


Sara Hassen wrote: