eDiscovery Daily Blog
eDiscovery Project Management: Review the Work
Yesterday, we talked about resolving questions quickly and keeping team members informed about changes to procedures to minimize the chance for significant rework. However, even with the best staff, mistakes happen — especially on projects that require a team of people. There are two general types of errors you can expect:
- Errors that are made because someone doesn’t properly understand the task. They have misunderstood the procedures or misinterpreted a subjective component of the work.
- Errors that are made simply because it is inevitable. People have bad days. They get tired. Knowing how to do something doesn’t mean you will do it right every time.
The first type of error is easy to identify and fix. Check initial work quickly and give immediate feedback. I always distribute small batches of initial work at the beginning of a task – work that an individual can finish quickly. Then I have that first initial batch for each person checked thoroughly and right away. Misinterpretations of the procedures or the criteria are evident and can be dealt with right away, before a lot of work has been done.
Catching the second type of error is a little more difficult unless your schedule and budget permit you to check 100% of the work. With a good staff, that’s probably overkill. But, it’s important that work is spot-checked throughout the life of a project, and that an intelligent approach is used to isolate problems. For example, if you find a few careless errors made by a staff member, see if you can isolate all of the work that person did on that day and check it completely. Or perhaps you’ll identify a particular type of document or situation that caused problems, and you can take steps to isolate just those documents or situations. Very often you can apply a systematic approach to finding and fixing errors.
What do you think? Have you worked on projects where quality control reviews were absent or inadequate and work quality suffered? Please share your comments or let us know if you would like more information on a topic.