3.3 Review Process and Roles

The Generic Review Process

A review is not just a meeting. In CTFL terms, the generic review process has activities before and after any group discussion. The process is tailored to the review type and context, but the syllabus defines six activities in a stable order.

Individual review (also called individual preparation) matters because it prevents the group discussion from being the first time anyone reads the material; in formal reviews it is where the majority of anomalies are typically found. Reviewers can apply checklists, scenarios, perspectives, or risk focus areas.

During communication and analysis, not every anomaly becomes a defect. A reviewer may misunderstand a domain rule, or raise an improvement suggestion rather than a required correction. The group decides status, ownership, and next action; for high-formality reviews, decisions and metrics are recorded. Note that fixing defects is the author's responsibility, and reporting closes the loop by confirming exit criteria are met.

The Review Roles and Their Responsibilities

Roles are a frequent exam target, and the syllabus names a specific set of roles with distinct responsibilities. One person may hold more than one role in lower-formality contexts, but the responsibilities stay attached to the role.

Notice the moderator and the review leader are distinct: the review leader has overall organisational responsibility (who, when, where), while the moderator focuses on facilitating an effective meeting. The manager controls resources and scope from outside the review; the author produces and fixes the product; the scribe documents; the reviewers find the issues.

The exam likes role traps. The moderator does not automatically fix the product — the author does. The scribe does not decide what must be reviewed — the manager does. The author should not dominate the conversation defensively, and in a formal inspection the author should not act as review leader or scribe, so that objectivity and traceability are preserved.

Map responsibilities to roles, not to job titles. A senior developer who wrote the code is still the author for that work product. A business analyst who examines acceptance criteria is a reviewer. A test manager who provides time and people is acting as manager. A person can wear two hats — for example reviewer and scribe — but the responsibilities of each role remain as defined.

Tailoring the Process and Reading Scenarios

The six activities are a generic template, not a rigid script. The syllabus is explicit that the process is scaled to the review type and context. An informal review may collapse planning, initiation, and individual review into a quick glance and skip formal reporting entirely. An inspection, by contrast, performs every activity deliberately, records metrics, and checks entry and exit criteria. So the number of activities you actually perform depends on the formality chosen in 3.4.

A frequent exam structure presents a short scenario and asks which activity is being described. Use these anchors:

• "We agreed which document, set objectives, and booked two hours" → Planning.
• "Everyone received the document and the checklist and confirmed their role" → Review initiation.
• "Each reviewer marked up the spec on their own and noted questions" → Individual review.
• "In the meeting we discussed each finding and decided which were defects" → Communication and analysis.
• "The author corrected the confirmed defects" → Fixing.
• "We confirmed exit criteria were met and recorded the defect-density metric" → Reporting.

Another common trap mixes roles with activities. Remember: the manager operates mainly around planning (deciding what to review and providing resources); the reviewers do the heavy lifting in individual review; the author owns fixing; the scribe documents during communication and analysis; and the moderator facilitates that same meeting. The review leader spans organisation across the whole process.

Finally, the syllabus links the review process back to independence and objectivity. Separating roles — especially keeping the author out of the review-leader and scribe positions in formal reviews — reduces the bias of an author defending their own work, and produces a more trustworthy record of what was found and decided. This is the same independence principle that runs through the whole CTFL: fresh eyes find defects the author's eyes slid past.