Peer Reviews

Peer Reviews

Welcome friends , new week has just started. Monday blue’s are on full swing. Let’s start this week’s blogging with a less talked topic “PEER REVIWES”

What is it ? In simple language this term is used to describe a review process of the artifacts /documents by the peers in the team wherein the author of the document presents it to peer members in the team with the purpose of getting feedback in order to improve the document before making its final version.

Process of peer review is not very tedious where the document author presents the document to the group of reviewers who are members of same team and explains the purpose of the document as to what is the document, objective and details about the document and ask for the feedback on the document. From the author’s point of view it’s good to have a checklist ready at his end before submitting the document just to reduce the reviewing time and avoid small mistakes.

Purpose behind this activity is can be –
- Validate the correctness of the document.
- Validate the coverage of document with respect to purpose for ex. Peer review of a test plan/strategy document should verify that the test plan/strategy is in accordance with the project/product for which we are doing testing and it is covering each and every aspect of testing which can be done/carried on.
- Validate the conformance of the document with respect to the process followed in organization, standards of the organization and client needs if any.

With respect to software testing , there are many documents for which we can conduct peer review such as test plan, test strategy , test cases and scripts and other such documents. Benefits of the PEER REVIEW process can be achieved only when the review comments are documented and in turn implemented properly. Also as a suggestion it should be done be senior members of the team who have good command over the product/system and have good domain knowledge