Activity: Organize Review

Plan review tasks

The person filling the Review Coordinator role starts this activity when the current project work plans have been consulted and the need for a review identifed.

The artifacts mentioned in the "Input Artifacts" section define a review framework, providing guidance and directions with regards to what the overall scope of the reviews should be, when they should take place, what is the level of formalism, and so forth. More detailed guidance could be found in the the Measurement Plan, the Quality Assurance Plan, the Development Case and in the Project Specific Guidelines.

There are various approaches to planning review activities: these approaches vary based on factors such as team size, team culture, the required formality of the projects process and the current point in the project lifecycle. Some of the general techniques used include:

• Inspection. A formal evaluation technique in which one or more artifacts are examined in detail. Inspections are considered to be the most productive review technique, however it requires training, and preparation to perform them well.
• Walkthrough. An evaluation technique where the author of one or more artifacts, "walks" one or more reviewers through the artifact. The reviewers ask questions, and make comments regarding technique, style, possible omissions or errors, deviation from established standards, and so on.
• Pre-reading & Feedback. One or more reviewers read through the artifact independently and make notes about their observations. When the reviewers are ready, they can meet and present their comments and questions. The meeting can be omitted, however, and reviewers can give their comments and questions to the author in written form instead.

The maximize efficiency and minimize team interruptions, consider planning the reviews in such a way that the required reviewers can be conviened a miminum number of times by having them review as many artifacts as possible. Obviously a realistic workload needs to be maintained for each review, so you will need to balance these conflicting needs accordingly.

Inform attendees

It is important to provide attendee's with sufficient notice about the review, and to advise them about what will be expectated of them in terms of both preparatory work and their involvement in the review process itself. Make it clear to each attendee what stakeholding they are being asked to represent and as such the type of review critique and feedback you are expecting from them.

Consult each of the specific review activities and accompanying guidelines in RUP to determine the criteria for inviting attendees, the recommended prepartory work for an attendeee and the expectations that will be placed on them by agreeing to attend the review. As some general guidance, you should consider the following stakeholders when inviting attendees to participate in the review meetings:

• The subsequent direct consumers of the artifact, including testing and documentation staff.
• Peers playing the role as the producer of the artifact who will act as domain or subject-matter experts.
• The producer of the artifact.
• The sponsor or budget holder.
• The consumer or users of the final product that will be realized from this artifact.

It is important to find the right balance between including the desired review participants and keeping the review manageable and productive. Care should be taken to include only those participants who will contribute to achieving the objectives of the review. In general, it is usually more productive to hold several focused review sessions with a smaller number of participants, than to hold one review involving many.

Conduct review meetings

While each of the specific review activities and accompanying guidelines in RUP provides specific guidelines and suggestions about how to conduct each review, the following guidelines are generally helpful when conducting any review:

• Always set aside specific time to conduct the review, usually in a recognized and repeatable meeting format, even if the meeting itself is casual or informal.
• To improve productivity, have the meeting participants prepare their own detailed reviews feedback on their own prior to the meeting.
• Check:
  • the quality of what has been produced to make sure the work meets an appropraite and acceptable standard of workmanship.
  • the completeness of what has been produced to make sure the work is sufficient for the subsequent work it will be referenced or consumed in. In many cases, Checkpoints are provided to help with this task; refer to the checkpoints for each Artifact or its associated activities.
  Note: you should consider using these checkpoints in your daily work on each artiafct: this will potentially save you time and effort in downstream rework. Note also that these checkpoints are useful for informal as well as formal review meetings.

Manage follow-up tasks

Following each review meeting, the results of the meeting should be documented in some form of Review Record. In addition, change request may be formal;ly recorded (and eventually assigned to someone to own and drive to resolution).

Once of the most important yet surprisingly often neglected aspects of reviews is the management to resolution of the follow-up tasks or actions identified during the review. While you can usually assign many of the identified actions during the course of the review meeting itself, be prepared to reassign tasks as needed to help balance the workload of team members.

Note that even if you can review everything you need to in a single meeting, you probably won't get approval of all your conclusions the first time. Be prepared to carry out subsequent reviews as necessary to help manage the undertaking of a large number of follow-up tasks.

Rational Unified Process