Any review or audit having technical material (as opposed to cost or schedule) as its subject. For any given developmental project, these reviews are organized according to the hierarchy of CI’s.
Legacy practices in this regard for DoD development were governed by MIL-STD-1521B, which is worth a read just to understand what they had in mind. It is heavy on lists, but (unfortunately) a bit light on philosophy.
It is worth noting (because it is critically important) that a review is worthless unless a reasonably wide variety of experience base is present in the jury. The objective of the exercise is for the jury to rule on the validity and rationality of the proposed decisions. It is reasonable…perhaps preferable…for spirited, passionate debate to erupt during the discussion. Possession of a collective or domineering bias on the part of the jury usually defeats the purpose.
It is also worth noting that such reviews are also worthless unless the jury members are non-members of the non-cognoscenti. On the other hand, it is not necessary for each jury member to be a specialist in the technical and operational domains in question1.
Footnotes- Bureaucrats, however, are not generally of use in this context[↩]