Quality Assurance in Requirements Management - Requirements Engineering and Management for Software Development Projects - page 97

2. Managerial review
a. Independent review
b. Guided review
6.3.1 Peer Reviews
Peer review is carried out by a person who has similar knowledge and experience
as the author of the artifact. Peers are selected normally from within the organi-
zation but can be selected from outside the organization when it does not have the
persons with the requisite experience and expertise besides the author. Peer review
looks very closely at the contents of the artifact. Every aspect of the artifact
receives attention including documentation guidelines, formatting, spelling and
grammar in addition to the technical content. The objectives of peer review are:
1. Ensure that the technical content is accurate.
2. Ensure that the technical content is comprehensive.
3. Ensure that all organizational standards and guidelines are adhered to in the
preparation of the artifact.
4. Ensure that the artifact is clear and lucid when used by others and that no
ambiguity is present in the artifact.
5. Ensure that the content in no case contains unnecessary content whether it is
innocent or malicious.
Figure 6.1 presents the peer review process pictorially.
Individual reviews are carried out by a single reviewer who is qualified and has
the domain knowledge to review the artifact. In this case, the author and the
reviewer interact with each other directly.
Group reviews involve multiple persons in the review. In group reviews nor-
mally a person acts as the review coordinator. Usually, the author or the project
manager of the project acts as the review coordinator. The review coordinator
selects the reviewers; provides them the artifact; collects feedback from al the
reviewers; collates the feedback; arranges for implementation of the feedback and
reviews the implementation of the feedback and passes the document to the next
stage.
Independent review is carried out in the absence of the author of the artifact.
The artifact is provided to the reviewer or reviewers. Reviewer/reviewers would
review the document and provide the review feedback to the author/review
coordinator for implementation in the artifact. Once the feedback is implemented
in the artifact, the reviewer/review coordinator would verify the implementation
and pass it for next stage.
Guided review is carried out in the presence of the author of the artifact. If only
one reviewer is assigned to review the artifact, the author would present the details
of the artifact to the reviewer. The reviewer provides the feedback to the author
during the review itself. The author implements the feedback later on and presents