Map Review, Revision, and Approval

Unit ID: PAW-M10-U03 Estimated active time: 20-25 minutes

Three different steps

They get collapsed into "someone looks at it", and they are not the same thing.

• Review — checking against criteria, producing a scored judgement.
• Revision — making the changes.
• Approval — a named person accepting responsibility for what goes out.

Different outputs, and often different people.

Approval is about accountability

Review asks "is this good?". Approval asks "am I willing to be the person who sent this?".

For anything external, on the record, or affecting a person, that question needs a name against it — and the name should belong to someone who read it.

The review and approval map

REVIEW AND APPROVAL

Review
  Who:            (not the person who wrote the prompt)
  Against what:   rubric / success criteria / source
  Time budget:
  Output:         scored sheet + decision

Revision
  Who:
  Rule:           if more than a third changes, go back to the prompt

Approval
  Who:            named person
  What they confirm:
  Record kept:    where, for how long
  If unavailable: does the work wait, or is there a deputy?

Separate the reviewer from the author

The person who wrote the prompt reads the output expecting what they asked for. That is the wrong frame for catching what is missing.

For anything above the middle of the review-level table, the reviewer should be someone else. Where the team is too small, a delay helps — reviewing tomorrow is better than reviewing immediately.

Cap the revision loop

Decide in advance how many revision rounds are allowed — two is usually right.

Past that, the workflow goes back to the prompt rather than continuing to patch the output. Without a cap, revision expands to fill the time.

Mini practice

For one workflow, name the reviewer and the approver — actual people.

Write what the approver is confirming, in one sentence.

If the two names are the same as the author's, decide what to change.

Mark complete