Top Diagnostics for Team Peer Reviews

A team peer review helps ensure project integrity and provides learning moments for project managers and reviewers. After confirming the existence of critical control documents like a schedule, risk management plan, and resource plan, the reviewers can search for these points. If they are missing, project management improvements might be needed.

• All risks describe the event that will cause the risk to come to fruition. In addition, risk triggers (early indicators of a risk occurring) should be documented. For example, stating that a product delivery might be late isn’t specific enough. If the delivery is due to a truck breakdown, that could be addressed. But the truck drivers going on strike is a different event with a different response. Ensure events and responses are appropriately detailed. An example of an early risk indicator is a stakeholder group not attending meetings, which indicates they might withdraw their support for the project.

• Task lengths in the project schedule are appropriate based on where the tasks occur in the timeline. For example, early in a year-long project, tasks with 2-week duration are reasonable. However, during the last month of a project, 2-week tasks are problematic, because an issue with one of these tasks could delay the project by 2 weeks when these is little time to recover.

• Resource availability is built into the schedule. Operational personnel rarely dedicate 100% of their time to a project. Resources should have allocations built into the schedule. For example, if Resource A is available to the project 25% of the time, the allocation of time to tasks is 25% so task duration is calculated correctly.

• Stakeholder meetings reflect the communication requirements stated in the stakeholder management plan. As a project progresses, the focus on stakeholder updates can wane. Ensure stakeholder meetings are being held as recommended in the project’s plans.

• Decision logs are included in the project documentation. A decision register is a good idea. Understanding the rationale and data used to make decisions during the project can avoid later debates about why a specific direction was taken, especially if the results of that decision were undesirable.

• Project plans include both quality control and quality assurance tasks. Quality assurance tasks are project activities to ensure the product quality will meet standards. Quality control refers to inspection or testing tasks to ensure the project’s products are suitable before being turned over to stakeholders. Many projects focus only on quality control tasks and discover errors that could have been avoided if quality assurance tasks were included in project plans.

• Lessons learned documentation are captured throughout the project. Many projects don’t capture lessons learned, while others do only as a close-of-project exercise. Capturing lessons learned at the end of a project inevitably results in many forgotten lessons forgotten. Capture and document lessons learned regularly during the project.

This is not a comprehensive list! But these shortcomings are common and easy to discover and rectify. Be sure to include them in every team peer review.

Let’s make the comment section a reference for what to look for in team peer reviews! Add your favorite diagnostic to the list.

For more about peer review, search the LinkedIn Learning library using keywords “peer review.”

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