If you are part of a regular publication, or a product that has regular release dates, I recommend doing a “post mortem” analysis after each new edition.  Pick out a few things that worked well.  Pinpoint the things that didn’t work out so well, and brainstorm ways to improve. 

In analyzing your latest publication, take all stages of production into account.  What resources did you use or skip?  What snags did you hit while doing your job?  How was the audience’s reception once it was done and out there?

You will gain insights as to how you can improve your system, yet I recommend implementing each change one at a time.  That’s the easiest way to isolate the change and see the effect it has, by keeping the rest of your system the same as a “control group.”  Good luck and happy analyzing.

-Tamara Hecht