Written by margaret procter, writing support an analytic or critical review of a book or article is not primarily a summary rather, it comments on and evaluates the work in the light of specific issues and theoretical concerns in a course. To help sharpen your analytical reading skills, see our file on critical reading. The literature review puts together a set of such commentaries to map out the current range of positions on a topic then the writer can define his or her own position in the rest of the paper. Keep questions like these in mind as you read, make notes, and write the review

Don't overlook facts about the author's background and the circumstances of the book's creation and publication. Does the author state an explicit thesis? does he or she noticeably have an axe to grind? what are the theoretical assumptions? are they discussed explicitly? again, look for statements in the preface, etc. What exactly does the work contribute to the overall topic of your course? what general problems and concepts in your discipline and course does it engage with? what kinds of material does the work present e.g. Primary documents or secondary material, literary analysis, personal observation, quantitative data, biographical or historical accounts ? how is this material used to demonstrate and argue the thesis? as well as indicating the overall structure of the work, your review could quote or summarize specific passages to show the characteristics of the author's presentation, including writing style and tone. Are there alternative ways of arguing from the same material? does the author show awareness of them? in what respects does the author agree or disagree? what theoretical issues and topics for further discussion does the work raise? what are your own reactions and considered opinions regarding the work?

browse in published scholarly book reviews to get a sense of the ways reviews function in intellectual discourse. Look at journals in your discipline or general publications such as the london review of books or the new york review of books some reviews summarize the book's content and then evaluate it others integrate these functions, commenting on the book and using summary only to give examples. Choose the method that seems most suitable according to your professor's directions to keep your focus, remind yourself that your assignment is primarily to discuss the book's treatment of its topic, not the topic itself.

Completing a project is not the same thing as ending the project management process. Simply finishing doesn't ensure that the organization benefits from the project's outcome. For example, after completing a year long project to establish a new quality management process for your organization, you want to make sure that what you set out to do was actually achieved. Your objective wasn't to simply deliver a process ndash but rather, to deliver the process that addresses the specific business need you intended to meet.

To make the most of the benefits that the project can deliver, however, you also need to check to see if further improvements will deliver still greater benefit. You also need to ensure that the lessons learned during the project are not forgotten. You can more effectively design and execute future projects when you take advantage of lessons learned through experience of previous projects. So how can you properly measure a project's success, and work toward continuous improvement? this is where the process of post implementation review pir is helpful.

It helps you answer the following key questions: did the project fully solve the problem that it was designed to address? can we take things further, and deliver even bigger benefits? what lessons did we learn that we can apply to future projects? the key to a successful pir is recognizing that the time spent on the project is just a small part of an ongoing time line. For people and organizations that will be working on similar projects in the future, it makes sense to learn as many lessons as possible, so that mistakes are not repeated in future projects. And for organizations benefiting from the project, it makes sense to ensure that all desired benefits have been realized, and to understand what additional benefits can be achieved.

A good time to start thinking about the post implementation review is when members of the project team remember the most ndash shortly after the project has been delivered, and when most of the problems have been ironed out. Start to list ideas and observations while they are still fresh in people's minds. However, to adequately assess the quality of the implementation and complete this process, you'll need to wait long enough for the changes caused by the project to truly take effect. Looking for a phd level person who can read a journal article and respond to a set of questions i have.

Use the questions as headings thereby breaking up the review responses into sections. Problem: what is the managerial practical problem and main academic theoretical purpose behind underlying this article? is the managerial problem important yes or no ? what is the managerial importance of the article? what is the academic importance of the article? defend your positions on all of these issues. Consider contribution: as indicated by the questions that follow, technical correctness and theoretical coherence are obvious criteria in evaluating an article, but don 039 t forget to consider the overall contribution that the manuscript offers.

Is the contribution or the article meaningful, interesting, or important? defend your position. Make a case in favor of why you think and/or the authors think that studying the problem is important. In discussing its importance, please consider both its practical and theoretical significances. Looking at the theory, is there an untested assumption worth testing? central hypothesis: state the central hypothesis or main proposition expressed/explored? is your the central hypothesis best classified as descriptive, explanatory, or predictive/causal? does the main hypothesis call for a measure of association or a measure of difference between two or more variables? defend your position on these issues. Sometimes an article shows how causes are interrelated or effects are interrelated. If this is the case in the article you are reviewing, show a to be a function of b and b to be a function of a. Looking at the hypotheses, is there a variable that was omitted that might explain why the author did not obtain expected results? please limit your statement of your the central hypothesis, in which should show the dependent criterion variable s or y as a function of the independent predictor variable s or x, to one sentence.

What information do the authors of the article present in support of your chosen hypothesis? please pick and choose among all the points that the authors make and list only those points that are relevant to your chosen hypothesis. Research design: what is the research design? is it an experimental design? is it a quasi experimental design? is it a correlational design? comment on the appropriateness of the design. Construct validity/reliability: restate your the central hypothesis, look for a description of how the cause that is, the independent or predictor variable s and the effect that is, the dependent or criterion variable s are being measured. For every variable in your central hypothesis comment on: face validity: do the measures measure what they are supposed to measure? internal reliability: are the measures reliable? level of measurement: what level of measurement is applied to these variables for example, for each, identify if they are nominal, ordinal, scalar. Unit of analysis: what is the unit of analysis for example, is it individual, group, corporate, societal ? does the unit of analysis match between variables? in your the central hypothesis, look for a description of how the cause that is, the independent or predictor variable s and the effect that is, the dependent or criterion variable s are being measured. That is, what is are the dependent variable s in the central hypothesis? how was or were the dependent variable s in the central hypothesis measured? how well is are the dependent variable s operationalized e.g. Unacceptable, acceptable, or superior or poor, average, or outstanding ? defend your position.