PeerReview Complete is a web-based tool that simplifies and expedites reviews of technical documents at every stage of the product development process. Helping teams to catch issues, reduce rework, and deliver quality products on time. PeerReview Complete reduces review times by enabling hardware and software teams to use one tool to share, review and annotate their most important design documents, validation plans, 2-D drawings, schematics, VHDL code, and software source code.
Although many workflows are possible, let's look at the out-of-the-box configuration.
Peer Review Process
Planning Phase
The review begins in the "Planning" phase when you, the author, upload documents or files for review and invite the other participants.
Reviews can have multiple participants, including one or more reviewers and zero or more observers in addition to the author. Reviewers are responsible for careful review, and subsequent review activity depends on their consensus; observers are invited and can participate but their consensus is not required to complete a review.
The "Planning" phase is complete when you finish uploading all necessary files and inviting the desired reviewers and observers. The review then enters the "Inspection" phase.
Inspection Phase
Side-By-Side File Comparisons
When the review switches to "Inspection," PeerReview Complete notifies all participants to alert them that the review is starting.
Image Overlay Comparisons
PeerReview Complete presents reviewers with the uploaded files, and allows anyone to begin a conversation by adding a “pin” and typing, and you can have any number of conversations going on at once. The associated pin and an overall review summary display keep the conversation threads distinct.
Commenting On an Individual Pin with an Existing Defect
Comments can work either like instant message chat or like newsgroups. If everyone is chatting at the same time, you have a real-time "instant message" environment so the review can progress swiftly. If one or more participants are separated by many timezones or aren't currently at the computer, the chat looks like a newsgroup where you post comments and receive notifications when someone responds. PeerReview Complete works equally well no matter where your team or reviewers are located.
Reviewers open a "defect" for every change you (the author) need to address before the review can be deemed complete. Like comments, defects are associated with review files or individual lines of code and show up in the threaded conversations (both chat- and newsgroup-style) on the pin alongside the comments. You can also create a defect for the review as a whole.
The "Inspection" phase is complete when all reviewers indicate it's ready to move to the next phase. If defects have been opened, the review proceeds to the "Rework" phase; otherwise the review moves to the "Complete" phase.
Rework Phase
In the "Rework" phase, you (the author) are responsible for fixing the defects found in the "Inspection" phase. This change might be as simple as clarifying a reviewer comment or as complex as a complete rework of the task involving different files than in the original review.
When you believe all defects are fixed, you upload the fixed files to the server and prompt the review to re-enter the "Inspection" phase so reviewers can verify the fixes and ensure no new defects have been introduced in the process.
Complete Phase
When the review is complete, that's it!
Administrative Controls
The system administrator can customize and control the review process in several ways.
They can define custom data fields so that review participants must provide information specific to their organizations. They can also set up different review templates to handle different types of reviews; each review template can specify its own set of custom data fields. A review template can also define its own roles (e.g. Moderator, Author, Reviewer, Observer, Reader, and Tester). Each role has a distinct set of permissions, help-text, and requirements during a review.
The system administrator can specify a variety of access controls, including whether non-participants can see review materials, whether users are allowed to cancel or delete a review, and a reviewer’s access to content.