Re: peer review ??

[Bonni Graham <bonnig -at- IX -dot- NETCOM -dot- COM>]

Becca Price asked:

>Is this strictly a *writing* review, or do SMEs contribute?  or do you have
>separate technical review meetings?  if it's all done at once, how do you
>keep the technical people from being bored out of their minds when you get
>into a discussion of a subtle point of technical writing?

I use peer review as strictly a writing review, and I try to have it fall
towards the *end* of the review cycle (I have a write-up of my preferred review
cycle and a review team worksheet for each iteration, if anyone wants to see
them). There isn't any real way to keep the SMEs from getting bored, so I
include them in a different iteration of the review cycle.

>if you have a separate technical review meeting, who attends?  and how do
>you enforce attendance?  (for example, we're getting excited here at the
>idea, since we have trouble pulling in comments *before* release - but if
>developers won't even read the doc. to review it now, how do we get them to
>come to a meeting having read it already?  and if they come and haven't read
>it, do we send them home and say "sorry, you lost your chance to tell us
>whether it's accurate or not?"

I almost never do technical review as a meeting.  I usually send a document
serially to the review team, with a due date for passing it on.  Then I go bug
the person who hasn't passed it on in time (I have a badger puppet I use for
this).  Mind you, I don't get this resistance as much from my clients as I did
when I was dealing with in-house staff.

Hope this helps!

Bonni Graham
Manual Labour