Collaborative document review
Producing a quality document is usually a collaborative process which involves the input of more than one individual. Creating business documents is a critical business process which frequently involves significant editing and review before final publication. This often requires collaboration with others both within the organization and externally with specialist contributors. This process takes time and commitment, from the document's creation, through to its editing and review.
Document production
Documents are produced by individuals and departments within organizations across industry sectors. Example documents include: contracts, RFPs, regulatory filings, clinical trial reports, regulatory submissions, agreements, policies & procedures, marketing material, new product specifications, etc. Electronic formats for document creation include Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF and plain text.
The review process
Document review is an important business process, requiring considerable resources. It is often a bottleneck in the overall document production lifecycle. Some reviews are simply achieved- for example, if the content is simple and short and also if only a couple of reviewers are involved. However, in many cases, the review requires the input of several others who provide specialist knowledge and other important input. This is often referred to as peer review whereby the content is evaluated by those of similar competence to enhance the document’s quality, check for accuracy, grammar and so forth. In this instance, collaboration is usually implicitly assumed without regard to how it is achieved as organizations continue to work with manual processes or other workarounds, making it a constant struggle to meet deadlines.[1]
The review process typically follows these steps:
- Document created by owner/author
- Sections of the document which need further editing are shared with other authors (co-authors)
- Edits collated and input into the original document
- Document shared with other contributors (e.g. subject-matter experts, colleagues, partners, suppliers, and consultants) for review
- Contributors review the document. Typically this review includes:
- Identifying typos
- Identifying syntax & other grammatical errors
- Altering content
- Adding or deleting content
- Reviewed content is returned to the owner/author
- Owner/author inputs changes and comments to the document as appropriate
- The review cycle is completed
nb.Several review cycles may be required to agree changes to the document content.
Workarounds
Workarounds to manage the review process tend to follow the routes below:
Email attachments: sending out the document for review by email as an attachment
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| multiple individuals can review the document | no collaboration |
| enables simultaneous review | confidentiality issues |
| difficulty consolidating comments & changes into the original document | |
| version control issues | |
| no reporting/audit trail | |
Review meetings: gathering those involved in the document together for a meeting
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| collaborative | cost |
| maintains confidentiality | organizational issues (e.g. absences) |
| no version issues | no formal reporting/ audit trail |
| version control issues | |
Web or telephone conferencing: gathering those involved in the review for a 'remote' meeting via web and/or tele conferencing
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| collaborative | reviewers must be online at the same time |
| maintains confidentiality | organizational issues (e.g. absences) |
| no version issues | no formal reporting/ audit trail |
Workarounds to this issue of document collaboration provide little structure or control and minimum automation – resulting in an inefficient, unsatisfactory and frustrating process. This can result in:
- Poor team collaboration – for example, users cannot access the document at the same time; individuals write over other people’s changes; there is no visibility over activity on the review
- An inefficient and time consuming process – for example, consolidating changes and compiling multiple marked up documents into a single master copy; reconciling different views; bringing everyone together at the same time
- No control over the document or the process – for example, limited reporting; no control over who can do what to where (e.g. overwriting, reformatting); version control
- Additional associated cost – such as travel costs
- Poor document quality – for example, loss of formatting; error prone
- Insecure (if document confidentiality is important)
- User frustration.
Collaborative document review software
A new generation of collaborative tools has evolved which support coordination of review activities via a web based service. This has the advantage that participants do not have to install specialised software or be linked in to a particular network. Access is through a web browser - anywhere and anytime.[2]
Examples of types of software include:
Collaborative Document Review online - Zoho Writer
Generic collaborative portals, PDF-based solutions, review functionality within Document/Content Management systems (usually PDF-based), Microsoft SharePoint/Office and specific collaborative portals, such as PleaseTech's PleaseReview.
The Boeing Collaborative Document Reviewer (BCDR) is an example of a web-based document review application tailored specifically for the aerospace industry for documents authored to the S1000D XML specification. In addition to generic HTML and PDF documents, it also supports state preserving commenting of interactive Intelligent Graphics documents such as hot spotted CGM wiring diagrams.[3]
Whilst most options allow for document review it is rare to find a single solution which permits simultaneous and collaborative review of the same copy of a document.
When researching appropriate software, certain functionality should be expected. The list below is suggestive and not exhaustive:
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| collaborative | allows reviewers to see each other’s comments in real time, so they see and can reply to others’ comments |
| comment association | allows reviewers to easily associate a comment with a specific location in the document |
| comment consolidation | provides the consolidation of comments into the original document |
| control | the author/owner has control over of the document, including which changes are applied, review parameters, who has access to the review etc. |
| offline option | allows reviewers to review the document without a network connection and share their comments when they come back online |
| reporting | review metrics are automatically captured for analysis and reporting |
| same copy | everyone is reviewing the same copy of the document |
| round trip for key document formats (e.g. Microsoft Word, PDF) | at the end of the review the author does not have to manually apply changes, getting back the Word/ PDF document with changes applied |
| secure | document contents are secure, even outside the corporate firewall (e.g. when reviewing the document with external parties) |
| simultaneous | multiple reviewers can review the same document at the same time |
| supports multiple document formats | multiple document formats can be reviewed, such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF, images, text, source code etc. |
Addressing the issue
Whilst solutions do exist, collaborative document review is a business process that many organizations do not seek to address. Research conducted in 2012 & 2013 by PleaseTech Ltd[4] suggests that user expectations are frequently low in terms of document collaboration. This research demonstrated that whilst initial reactions expressed general satisfaction with their process, more in depth questioning revealed a host of issues and challenges. To this end, PleaseTech developed a tool: The Document Collaboration Maturity Model’ which assesses the maturity of uses requirements vs. process. An online questionnaire allows individuals to identify their requirements and compare these to how well their current process (or technology) delivers against these requirements. Conclusions and high level next step recommendations are also provided.
Notes
- ↑ http://www.pleasetech.com/businessneeds.aspx
- ↑ Butler, Martin (2009). "The Business Value of Collaboration".
- ↑ Bremer, J.F.; Donovan, M.W. & Hougardy, E. (2007). "A Web-based Collaborative Document Reviewer".http://iwces2007.loria.fr/wiki/uploads/Main/BremerIWCES07.pdf
- ↑ Oracle document collaboration whitepaper, Whitepaper - Oracle research results.