Reviewing Tool - Not Convinced to Use One?

[Geoff Hart]

Marie Palmieri wondered: <<Just participated in an eSeminar for a  
documentation reviewing tool. The eSeminar was presented well and the  
tool seems solid. However, I’m not convinced that using a  
documentation reviewing tool has a big payoff. Perhaps it could  
streamline workflow to some degree, but it also seems to introduce  
other things that have to be managed, such as assigning and adjusted  
the statuses of individual comments.>>

Well, let's put it this way: by implementing such a tool* (plus a few  
other nifty tricks), we cut publication times for research reports  
from an average of 6 to 9 months and sometimes longer to a consistent  
timing of less than 3 months in almost every case at a previous  
employer. That's at least a 50% time savings, depending on how you  
slice the data, and last I heard, they're consistently beating that 3- 
month estimate more than 6 years later.

* Developed as a home-grown using the task management features of  
Outlook/Exchange Server. It was crude and buggy, but it basically  
worked a treat. I attribute much of the success of this system to the  
fact that we developed it in collaboration with all stakeholders and  
tested the heck out of it before unleashing it on staff, thus we had  
considerable buy-in.

I'd estimate (working without a net here -- though I could probably  
dig up statistics with a fair bit of work) that at least half of that  
savings comes from the tracking and task management system, and the  
rest comes from a few streamlining things such as reducing the number  
and frequency of the reviews and me working with the authors and  
their managers to create an effective outline that everyone accepted  
***before*** they began writing.

YMMV, of course. <g> This was an odd situation, with many extenuating  
circumstances we had to work our way around. These changes were all  
things I'd been advocating for years, but it wasn't until we  
conducted a Kaizen exercise that we collected stats to support my  
claims.


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-- Geoff Hart
ghart at videotron.ca / geoffhart at mac.com
www.geoff-hart.com
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