One of the most important tasks any professional program manager has is to make sure that each part of the program lifecycle is carefully designed and that the experience is stress-free for all the participants. We have already tackled the ways how to make the online submission friendly for an applicant. Yet, as we move further into the next stage of the program lifecycle, a program administrator has a responsibility to ensure that reviewer comments are constructive and of high quality. If you ask the right questions, you are bound to get the right answers, aren’t you?

However, to rely on sheer luck or happenstance that the generic review form will somehow provide you with a clear insight into reviewer’s feedback for the variety of programs you manage, simply does not work. In order to obtain an in-depth review, the review form should be wisely crafted so that the goal is successfully achieved. It is very convenient to use the basic structure of the form as a generic template and then further customize it to suit the needs of each individual program.

1. Tailor the form to suit your needs

Just like suits, not one scorecard form fits all. Generic models may get the job done but a custom scorecard forms allows for a higher chance of identifying the best candidate for the program by obtaining a more specific feedback from your reviewers.

2. Reduce manual effort

By creating a template that is well structured, you can make sure that you don’t increase administrative workload. In other words, if you use a generic part in review form for all programs, just put all such details into one section. In this way you can easily skip to the part of the form that needs modifications, without having to check the entire generic section whenever you need to create a new form.

3. Simplified scoring

Luckily, this entire workflow is automated. With the right tool, it is possible to automatically assign a specific scoring system to each individual program, and have this reflected in the statistic scoring system report for each program.

4. Comment section

Scorecard review form does not necessarily have comment section included by default, yet this section allows that extra thought or explanation you need from reviewer in case the scorecard criteria did not cover all aspects. Providing a reviewer with a space for a simple sentence or two explaining why such scoring was made will typically suffice.

By using this information, you will be able to efficiently make use of a customizable scorecard review, thereby securing a detailed feedback from the reviewer.