Best Practice Building an Effective Review Process in Jama Connect®

Published Date: July 21, 2026 
Audience: Everyone
Products and Versions Covered: 

• Jama Connect® - All Versions

Summary

Reviews are a critical part of developing high-quality products. They help teams identify issues early, improve collaboration, and ensure that requirements are complete, clear, and testable before downstream work begins.

Rather than relying on a single review at the end of development, successful organizations perform iterative peer reviews throughout the lifecycle and use formal approval reviews when requirements are ready for release or regulatory approval.

Resolution

Define the Purpose of Each Review

Not every review should have the same objective.

Different review types answer different questions.

Separating these review objectives allows reviewers to focus on the decisions they're best qualified to make.

Invite the Right Reviewers

Effective reviews involve stakeholders who bring different perspectives.

For engineering requirements, consider inviting reviewers from:

• The upstream discipline that produced the source requirements
• The downstream team responsible for implementing the requirements
• Verification or test engineering
• Subject matter experts (SMEs)
• External suppliers or partners, when applicable
• Customers or customer representatives for customer-specific requirements

Including reviewers from multiple disciplines helps validate both technical accuracy and usability throughout the product lifecycle.

Assign Review Focus Areas

Rather than asking everyone to review everything, assign reviewers specific areas of responsibility.

For example:

Assigning focus areas reduces duplicate comments and encourages more meaningful feedback.

Review Early and Review Often

Large reviews are difficult to complete and often result in lower-quality feedback.

Instead:

• Review requirements as they become ready.
• Keep reviews focused on a manageable number of items.
• Publish review revisions whenever significant updates are made.
• Resolve comments before moving work to the next lifecycle stage.

An iterative review process helps teams identify issues while changes are still inexpensive to make.

Use Jama Connect's Item-Based Reviews

Jama Connect stores requirements and other artifacts as individual, traceable items rather than static documents.

This allows teams to:

• Review only the items that are ready.
• Review subsets of a larger specification.
• Include related upstream and downstream items to provide additional context.
• Reuse reviewed items across multiple releases or products.

Because reviews operate on individual items, teams can continuously improve requirements throughout development instead of waiting until an entire document is complete.

Use Workflow to Manage Review Readiness

Many organizations define workflow states that reflect review readiness.

A typical lifecycle might include:

Draft → Ready for Review → In Review → Ready for Approval → Approved

These workflow states make it easier to understand where each requirement is in the development process and support consistent governance across projects.

Automate Workflow Transitions

Organizations can configure automatic workflow transitions to occur when a review is finalized.

When a moderator finalizes a review:

• Reviewed items can automatically transition to a designated workflow state (for example: Approved).
• A Finalized baseline is automatically created, capturing the content and approved state of the reviewed items.

Automating these activities helps ensure that review completion, lifecycle progression, and baseline creation occur together as part of a consistent approval process.

Understand Reviewer and Approver Roles

Reviewers and approvers serve different purposes.

Reviewers provide comments, identify issues, and recommend improvements.

Approvers determine whether reviewed content satisfies the organization's approval criteria.

Many organizations perform several collaborative peer reviews before conducting a formal approval review.

Remember that approval criteria are defined by your organization's quality process, not by Jama Connect.

Conduct Effective Review Meetings

Online reviews allow participants to contribute asynchronously, but many teams also benefit from short review meetings to resolve outstanding issues.

When conducting review meetings:

• Focus on unresolved issues rather than reading every comment.
• Encourage participants to review feedback before the meeting.
• Capture action items instead of debating lengthy design decisions during the session.
• Reserve detailed technical discussions for follow-up meetings when appropriate.

Well-prepared participants lead to shorter, more productive review sessions.

Best Practices

• Review requirements continuously throughout development.
• Keep reviews small and focused.
• Invite reviewers from upstream, downstream, testing, and subject matter expert roles.
• Assign each reviewer a specific focus area.
• Publish review revisions frequently.
• Use workflow states to manage review readiness.
• Configure automatic workflow transitions, where appropriate.
• Use Finalized baselines to preserve approved content for audits and traceability.

Additional Resources

• Reviews in Jama Connect 
• Create a Review 
• Setting up Project Workflows
• Review Workflow and Automatic Workflow Transitions 
• Baseline Best Practices 
• Understanding Review Status vs. Item Status in Jama Connect®
• How do I Classify Contextual or Informational Content

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