Improving the Practice of Document Review

Document reviews should be used as a tool to build quality into research and technical reports. In most handbooks for professional writers, review is recommended for clear and simple reasons: it is intended to identify problems and suggest improvements that enable an organization to produce documents that accomplish its goals and meet readers’ needs. It is true that science creates devices and drugs, but it is the documents that secure product approval and registration from the FDA and other regulatory agencies.

To create high quality documents in the most efficient manner, reviews must take place at various stages of document development. No matter the stage, all reviews should be strategic—that is they need to address the fundamental question of whether the document makes the right argument about the data described in the report. Reviewers should ask if the document stands up to challenge and fully justifies its conclusions. They should ask whether the reader is given enough context to understand the positions expressed in the document.

Review allows subject matter experts and upper management to add information that may not be available to authors. Review offers an opportunity for building consensus across functions within an organization.

Review is a process of evaluation that focuses on the functional elements of a document (what the document is supposed to ‘do’ or supposed to ‘say’). We can characterize the major purposes of review in descending order of importance as follows:

• Attending to purpose in terms of confirming content matches purpose of the document; logic of the arguments are complete and relevant, and the organization of the document content will readily support what the reader wants to do with the document.
• Attending to audience in terms of confirming precision of the discussion (semantics); sufficient contextual information; and ease of navigation.
• Attending to compliance in terms of confirming accuracy and completeness of content; consistency of style; and reasonably well-structured grammar.

Successful collaborative document development and review practices always include the following attributes:

1. Involvement of critical stakeholders early, defining their roles and responsibilities.
2. Articulation of the targeted scope, purpose(s), and message(s) for the final document.
3. Shared quality standards for the final document product and formally described procedural agendas for the who, what, when, and why of review.
4. Identify and plan phases of review and associated priorities.

Originally published on our Knowledge Management blog