The Documentation Review Process: A Practical Guide
Published: 2022-12-23 12:15:28

When you’re working on a project and have to conduct a documentation review, you might be confused about what exactly this process involves, who are the stakeholders, and the what the outcome of the review process might be. In this blog piece let us scratch the surface of the Document review process and its vitality to quality content.

## Definition of Document Review

Documentation review is a process where the document goes through one or multiple stages of review and reviewers and the feedback gets amended in the document. The outcome of the document review process is that it enhances the accuracy and quality of the document.

Documentation review is one of the most time-consuming activities regarding end-user documentation. It requires much concentration and focuses since it’s not as simple as reading through the document and spotting grammatical errors or typos.

In fact, it’s much more complicated than that and requires scrutiny of every word, heading, sentence, and paragraph to ensure that there are no logical inconsistencies or gaps in information. You need to understand the structure of the document, identify the primary audience, evaluate its readability, identify any truncated sentences or sections that should be expanded, etc.

## Different Stages of Document Review

**Peer review**
– The document is reviewed by a relevant to the core content of the document

**Editor review**
– The document is reviewed by a senior writer, or an editor reviews the document’s for overall quality

**Stakeholder review**
– The document is reviewed by the Subject matter expert or the end users

**Compliance review**
– In case the document has to adhere to regulations and compliances set either by the industry, governing body, or the company the document is put through this review as well.

## Purpose of the Documentation Review

When you’re conducting a documentation review, the first thing you need to do is determine or understand the purpose of the review. This will determine the criteria you use to evaluate the document during the review and the length of the review.

For example, suppose you’re conducting a review of an internal employee training document. In that case, your primary goal will be to ensure that the document is accurate and that the information is presented in a way that’s both easy to understand and accessible to the employee. The outcome of the document should be that the employee is well-informed of the context after reading the document.

On the other hand, if you’re conducting a user manual review, your primary goal will be to ensure that the document conveys accurate, complete, and consistent information about the product or service to the end user.

For example, Let’s assume you are working on a user manual for an HR portal. You are reviewing an article on how users can reset their login password. In that case, you need to ensure the article contains the complete application process flow leading up to the Login screen, reset password button, and what happens after you have initiated the reset. Also, you must ensure the consistency of the business terms in the article.

## Who conducts document reviews?

Document review is done mostly by multiple reviewers and sometimes by a sole reviewer. The reviewers can be both in-house or independently hired reviewers. As far as personnel is concerned in the document review they can be other writers, Subject matter experts (SME), Editors, SEO personnel, or anyone relevant to the document for that matter.

**Subject Matter Expert Review**

A Subject Matter Expert (SME) can be anybody from your Developer, Engineer, Support manager, Analyst, etc., who has a comprehensive understanding of the core concept of your document.

For example, In a SaaS company, the developer can be considered a Subject matter expert as they develop the feature that the technical writer documents.

The role of the SME in the review process is crucial as they scope out all the technical gaps and inconsistencies in the document. It is not always the case that the document writer would be an expert on the technicalities of a feature compared to technical personnel working on the same product. Hence, Subject matter experts and Technical writers should work hand-in-hand on technical documents or product documentation.

## What to Look for During a Documentation Review

When conducting a documentation review, you need to look for several things, including the quality of the writing, the structure of the document, the context provided, the flow of content, and the readability level of the document.

Let’s discuss these aspects in detail.

**Quality of the writing –** Whether you’re reviewing a user manual or training documentation, the quality of the writing is the first thing to look for when conducting a review. You must ensure that the document is free of grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. If the document is riddled with these kinds of errors, it will reflect poorly on your organization, especially if it is an end-user document meant for customers. One suggestion to aid you with the review is enforcing a custom or available Document style guide. You can also use third-party grammar check tools such as Grammarly to a certain extent.

**Structure of the document –** The structure of the document refers to how the information has been organized. If the document has a table of contents, you must review the table of contents and make a note of any inconsistencies. If the document does not have a table of contents, you must identify the primary sections and provide a summary of each section. Usage of the Heading tags (H1, H2, H3…) is highly recommended. Also, the document should follow a set document pattern, the most common being Introduction-Problem Statement-Resolution-Conclusion-References.

For example, Document360 editors (Markdown and WYSIWYG) lets you add Heading tags such as H2, H3, and H4 in your article. The platform also has the ability to autogenerate Table of Contents (TOC) based on the Heading tags provided in the article.

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