Following are internal or trusted, external expertise needed in the design review:

1. Regulatory expert (responsible for product compliance to environmental and user safety standards and regulations)
2. Industrial standards expert (responsible for product compliance to specific product, functional, performance, handling and usability standards)
3. Consultant (to provide for science, technology, knowledge, etc. that is required for the product, but not available in-house)
4. Organizational expert (responsible for product compliance to social and demanded requirements of union, targeted municipalities, etc. - also may demand specific product, functional, performance, environmental and usability requirements)
5. Cultural expert (responsible for product compliance to specific cultural, religious, or extraordinary user group, demands)

Now... this doesn't mean that you invite hoards of people from all these groups. But, you need to have appropriate experts that can be trusted with your company's proprietary information and who have expertise in those areas pertinent to the product's development so they can apply their particular knowledge and experience to the design review. They must be interactive, and they really should (if possible) be the people who have responsibility for the product's consequent development, marketing, production and support. However, the number of reviewers should be held to the absolute minimum required to represent each pertinent discipline. And, anyone who sits at the back of the room and remains silent should not be there, as this is an indication that any discipline represented by silence will not have its needs addressed and/or validated.

To add to this point, research by Greer and Black⁵ uncovers a flaw in complex development efforts, which they call disconnects,, i.e., "... latent differences in understanding among groups that can negatively affect the program should they remain undetected or unresolved." Disconnects in the "Intellectual-capital supply chain" are what almost always cause confusion between various disciplines responsible for the product's development. This author's experience (and that of many other colleagues) shows that such knowledge disconnects do exist even in less complex product development efforts.

There are three disconnect-mitigating recommendations resulting from Greer and Black's research that are applicable to any development project and, consequently, germane to the product design review:

1. "Provide more clear communication of project/product - Improve clarity of communication"; e.g., establish a concise and validated product and design representation that reaches across technical, marketing, production, etc. boundaries.
2. "Appropriate expertise by each stakeholder - Raise the level of Expertise"; e.g., exploit appropriately knowledgeable, experienced and active review participants,
3. "Efficient resolution and feedback of changes - Accelerate observations and orientation of other organizations' changes in understanding of the baseline"; e.g., create a rapid process that allows the stakeholders to identify, analyze and resolve project/product incongruities.

From the discussion above it's clear that the product manager, or whoever is running the design review, needs to deal with more than just technical issues in order to generate and complete a successful design review. Organizational aplomb, comprehensive knowledge of the pending project, negotiating skills and social dexterity are just some of the talents required.

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⁵ Greer and Black, op. cit., p. 1