Peer Review – Technical Writing

After completing your guide, you need to get that reviewed by someone. There are three types of reviews. First one is Peer Review, second is Subject Matter Expert (SME) review and the third one is Grammar Review. The first review, which is Peer Review, has to be done by your fellow technical writers. During this review, the reviewer goes through the stuff for clarity of instructions, verify and validate written functionality, and check for grammatical errors. Eighty percent of the guide review will be completed during the peer review stage. Unfortunately, most of the times, people do not find time to do a satisfactory peer review. And in some cases, employees’ tries to settle personal scores using this as a tool. However, peer review if done properly, then the chances of finding errors in later stages of reviews will deliberately go down.

Technical writing demands a precise, concise, and surgical way of presenting the content to the end user. The writer is supposed to follow the task, understand it, and need to convey the same to the end user in a lucid way. Understanding complex functionalities and presenting them in a lucid manner so that a layman can understand the stuff is not so easy. The writer need to know where s/he has to chunk the stuff so that it is properly convey the underlying idea without wasting the precious time of the reader. However, most of the times, it is easier said than done.

After completion of the task or guide, as per Document Development Life Cycle (DDLC), the said document has to undergo different kinds of reviews. The idea is that by the time the document completes its final review stage, the matter in the document represents exactly the original functionality of the product without any errors or deviations. Most of the companies follow a process where the written document will get reviewed at least once or twice for both the functionality and grammar check.

Peer review is the first stage review. In this review, the document is expected to be cleaned from different errors by at least 80%. The colleague technical writers will do this review. Concentration will be on the functionality and grammar part during this review.

Peer review is heavily dependent on good relations and understanding between the colleagues. One can mar the advantages by playing office politics and cornering the writer in question. These kinds of problems are so common in organizations. The only remedy for these kinds of problems is to conduct the peer review under the supervision of a Project Manager, who has good experience in managing personnel.

In summary, peer review has many advantages. It has the capacity to filter 80% of the errors in the first stage itself. Peer review, when conducted under the supervision of a good personnel manager, will definitely give best results.