Tips and Ways of Ensuring Effective Code Review

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Effective Code Review

Code reviews are done frequently almost daily by software development teams. Reviewing codes regularly results in high-quality codes by improving communication, sharing of code-based knowledge, and reducing the bugs in the developed code. Ensuring effective code reviews requires practicing code review best practices during the process. Software development and execution have a coding standard that should be achieved by the team. These standards are maintained and enhanced by doing several frequent code reviews. In the case of codes that are passed over from someone else, it is important to have a plan on how to handle its maintenance and track its development metrics.

 To ensure that process evaluation is effective and quick, the software analytics tools are essential in critical metrics tracking. The first and foremost step in practicing the best code review as an engineering team is ensuring that the process and standards expected are well elaborated. Training on how to review codes also helps in equipping the developers and engineers with the ability to take part in quality code reviews. The following are some of the best code practices that contribute greatly towards the best evaluation.

  1. Conduct a manageable review.

Smaller commitments and division of code work reviews into smaller portions help to make them more manageable. It is easier to understand work in small chunks hence effective code review results. The benefit of dividing the work may not be clear at first to a team that prefers bulky commitments but later on, they will appreciate it since the process flow with improving greatly. Code review should have preferably 400 lines of code per hour to avoid faults improve attention towards a particular batch.

2. Establish clear goals.

Communicating the intended work and tasks to the team in advance helps to make the process more effective. The members should be updated on what the code is about via emails, whiteboards, or handouts among other collaborative communication tools. Ensuring everyone is on board during the review process ensures participation and completion of intended tasks.

3. Prevent disruptive and toxic traits.

The managing engineer knows each team member best. Each member’s productivity, morale, and professionalism are important during a code review session. However, some employees may show inappropriate and disruptive behaviours that affect the code review execution. Such cases should be handled in private and the offender talked to. Communicating the problem directly to the person causing it is a fast way of eliminating such behaviours.

4. Consistent scheduling

Code reviewing is a secondary process and to help prevent problems with scheduling it is recommended to conduct the process at the same time, place, and day each time. To complete code review processes in time it is important to make the process a priority by allocating time to ensure proper code reviews.

5. Maximize participation.

A managing engineer should consider the size of the team involved in the review process and ensure everyone is contributing. Code review is teamwork and the results depend on everyone’s input. The number of members participating should be around 7-10 so that everybody gets a chance to contribute. All team members should be included including all senior managers and engineers. Participation is directly correlated to the quality of work achieved.

6. Use code review tools.

There are several code review tools. The team should select the best tools when reviewing to make the process effective and obtain quality results. The tool chooses should be able to identify any changes made, enable fast communication with everyone, and decide whether to approve or not to approve the commit.

7. Automate the process.

Automated code review and development help to enhance the process metrics. Codacy is an automatic tool that can be employed to check on the code style, check on common errors, and best practices. An automated process helps to save time and focus on important matters hence workflow.

8. Use records and reports.

Code reviewing requires update and efficient data-keeping, the team members involved in a code review should be recorded together with the details on when it was done and for what reasons. The records should also include what was done and the results achieved. This helps to generate a comprehensive list for future reference.

Conclusion

The best code review with effective results requires knowledge sharing and bigger team participation. Successful code review requires planning to ensure workflow.it is best for team engagement and contribution other than individual input. This process enables developers to enhance their skills, learn from mistakes made by other engineers and learn new techniques for effective review.

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