the code review methodology

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code review

Code review is a systematic software quality assurance technique for developers in which the code is reviewed to find and fix errors, improve code quality, and enforce coding standards.

Table of Contents

• What is a peer code review?
• Automated code review
• Is a code review important?

How to do a code review

What are code review tools.

• Automated code review tools
• Automated code review tool benefits
• Sonar and code reviews

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Code review is a software quality assurance process where one or more persons or tools systematically examine and evaluate the source code of a program. One or more of the individuals reviewing the code need to read the code and identify any issues within the code. 

The goal of code reviews is to identify bugs, improve code quality, and follow best practices and standards for coding.

Code reviews are typically performed before integrating the code into the main branch of the codebase and can also be done periodically for existing code to maintain its quality over time. 

The process of code review helps catch errors early in the software development lifecycle (SDLC), fosters collaboration among team members, and ultimately leads to a more robust and reliable software product.

There are code review tools that can assist with automating the review process. These review tools can check for coding errors and provide recommendations for improving the code. 

If the code review is performed manually, at least one of the individuals should not be the author of the code. 

What is a peer code review? 

Peer code review is a software development process in which one or more developers examine code generated by a peer before merging it into the main repository. This method is intended to improve software quality, detect defects and vulnerabilities early, share expertise among team members, and ensure coding standards are followed.

Peer code review can be done in a variety of ways, but the primary method is for the reviewer to read the code and look for errors. The code reviewer may also question the author about the code in order to better grasp its intent. 

What is an automated code review?

An automated code review is a process in which static code analysis tools are used to automatically review and analyze the source code for potential issues and coding standard violations.  Automated code review accelerates the identification and resolution of code issues and improves code quality (reliability, security, maintainability).

Different from peer review where a human is manually looking through code line by line, automated code reviews utilize tools to detect a wide range of errors from bugs and vulnerabilities to styling issues. As compared to manual peer review, automated code review tools can quickly and efficiently scan codebases to identify defects, security vulnerabilities, coding style violations, and other potential problems.

Some common issues normally highlighted with automated code review tools include:

• Syntax errors
• Logic errors
• Security vulnerabilities
• Code style violations
• Compliance with coding standards

These kinds of code inspections are essential in current DevOps and Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) processes.

Why is a code review important?

Code review is an important method for increasing software quality. It can aid in the detection of defects and errors, the improvement of code readability, security, and maintainability, and the exchange of knowledge early in the development process. By implementing code reviews earlier in the development life cycle, you can save time and money later on in the process. 

By utilizing code reviews earlier on also, it can be made easier for future developers to work on and understand the code that is evaluated. This helps promote knowledge and collaboration among team members along with fostering shared code ownership. 

What is a secure code review?

Secure code review is a subset of code review that focuses on detecting potential security flaws and weaknesses in a codebase. Its goal is to ensure that the application’s codebase is resistant to potential security threats and follows secure coding practices. It's a proactive strategy that aids in the detection and correction of security flaws before the application goes live. This can prevent attackers from exploiting weaknesses in the code.  

Secure code review can be performed manually, by a security professional or developer reviewing the code line by line, or automatically, with secure code review tools that scan the code and flag errors. The code reviewer looks for common security issues in the code such as injection flaws, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities, and authentication and authorization issues. 

Secure code review is an important aspect of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) since it can assist in identifying and correcting security flaws before they are exploited by attackers. The reviewer looks over code to identify known vulnerabilities like those mentioned in the OWASP Top 10 along with concerns unique to the application or dev environment. 

Typically, the process includes both manual and automated reviews. Manual reviews can evaluate the logic and design of the code, identifying issues that other tools may overlook. Automated tools rapidly scan vast codebases for common vulnerabilities and coding errors, increasing the efficiency of the review process.

Code reviews are an essential element of the software development process that can considerably improve the final product's quality. 

Here's a step-by-step guide to performing a code review:

Prepare for the review

Set some time aside to become accustomed to the code before beginning the review. This includes reading the code, knowing its purpose, what the code is supposed to do, and comprehending the team's coding standards.

Understanding the goal and context of the code modification is critical.

Start the review

You can begin the review once you are familiar with the code. The review should be a two-way dialogue between you and the code's author. You should ask the author questions regarding the code, and they should explain their decisions. 

Review the design

Determine whether the suggested solution is consistent with the application's existing architecture and design patterns. If the implementation diverges significantly, it is worthwhile to demonstrate why and how the alternate solution improves the project.

Check correctness

Ensure that the code functions as expected and achieves its intended goal. This could include manually executing and testing the code, examining automated test results, or simply confirming that appropriate testing was performed.

Look for any problems as you go through the code. This involves searching for logic mistakes, security flaws, performance difficulties, and readability issues.

Review code style and standards

The code should follow the coding style and standards of the team. Code style consistency makes the code easier to read and understand. This includes correct indentation, naming conventions, and code organization.

Check for code smells

Code smells can indicate more serious issues in the code. Large classes or methods, redundant code, magic numbers, or excessive complexity are examples. If you notice a code smell, it's worth talking about and possibly refactoring .

Examine Readability 

The code should be easy to read and understand. Good code usually is self-explanatory. 

Review tests

Ideally, code changes should be accompanied by tests. Ensure that there is appropriate test code coverage and that the tests are testing the functionality correctly.

Evaluate security and performance

Analyze the code for possible security vulnerabilities and performance issues. If the code adds new features, make sure they don't have an adverse effect on the application's performance or security.

Provide feedback

When you notice problems, give clear, constructive comments. Explain what's wrong, why it's a problem, and, if possible, provide a solution. Be courteous and professional in your remarks.

Communicate

If you have any concerns or questions, don't be afraid to ask them. It is preferable to clarify uncertainty rather than make assumptions. Code review is more than just looking for bugs; it's also an opportunity for discussion and learning.

Summarize your review

When you're through, write a summary of your findings. Depending on the conclusion of your review, you can approve the modifications, suggest revisions, or just include comments.

Resolve issues

After reviewing your suggestions, the developer should be able to remedy the issues. This could include changing the code or justifying their decisions.

The purpose of a code review is not only to find problems but to promote sharing knowledge, cooperation and continuous learning with the team. When executed properly, code review may greatly enhance the quality of your code. 

Code review tools are software applications that help in the code review process. These tools work to improve the organization, efficiency, and effectiveness of code reviews by include capabilities such as side-by-side comparisons, automated analysis, commenting systems and integration with version control systems.

Here are a few factors to think about when selecting a code review tool:

• The project's size and complexity. Larger and more sophisticated tasks may necessitate the use of more powerful tools.
• The available budget. Some code review tools are open source and free, while others are not.
• The functions provided by the tool. Some tools provide more features than others.
• The tool's ease of use. Some tools are more user-friendly than others.

Certain code review tools with version control systems include:

They use a Pull Request or Merge Request functionality to help with code reviews.

What are automated code review tools?

Automated code review tools are software applications that analyze code automatically to find bugs, security flaws, and coding standards violations. These tools employ static code analysis, which examines the code without running it. The major purpose of these tools is to improve the efficiency of the code review process by spotting common errors, allowing human reviewers to focus on more difficult areas of the code.

What are the benefits of automated code review tools?

The following are some benefits of utilizing automated code review tools:

Improved code quality

Automated code review tools can greatly enhance code quality by identifying common programming errors, code smells, and potential security vulnerabilities.

Increased efficiency

Automated code review tools assist in making the code review process more efficient. This is due to the fact that they can scan code far faster than a human reviewer across multiple codebases. 

Improved accuracy

Automated code review tools can improve code review accuracy. This is due to their ability to detect potential flaws and weaknesses that a human reviewer may overlook.

Consistency 

These tools enforce the same rules to all code in the same way, ensuring that coding standards and guidelines are followed consistently throughout the project.

You can scale dramatically because these tools can handle code reviews for massive codebases where manual reviews cannot. They excel at such workloads and is one of the primary advantages of using automated tools. 

Reduce risks

Automated code review tools can reduce the risk of errors and vulnerabilities in source code. This is because they may detect possible issues before they are put into production.

Sonar and Code Reviews

Code reviews play a vital role in modern software development. Sonar streamlines the review process, enhances code quality, and fosters best practices in coding; complementing traditional manual code reviews by quickly detecting issues that might be time-consuming or challenging for humans to spot, ensuring a more efficient and robust code review process.

SonarQube is an open-source based Clean Code tool for continuous code quality inspection. It conducts automated code reviews using static analysis to find defects, code smells, and security issues. It works with continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines and supports over 30 programming languages. It has an extensible architecture to allow developers to write custom rules and plugins to adapt the analysis to their specific needs.

SonarCloud is a cloud-based version of SonarQube, providing the same powerful code analysis and quality monitoring capabilities but without the need for on-premises hosting. It offers automatic analysis and pull request decoration, enabling developers to get code quality feedback directly within their version control platform during code review. Both SonarQube and SonarCloud play a crucial role in improving code quality, identifying security vulnerabilities, and enforcing coding standards in software projects.

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What is a code review?

A code review is a peer review of code that helps developers ensure or improve the code quality before they merge and ship it.

What are code reviews, and how do they work?

Code reviews , also known as peer reviews, act as quality assurance of the code base.

Code reviews are methodical assessments of code designed to identify bugs, increase code quality, and help developers learn the source code.

After a software developer has completed coding, a code review is an important step in the software development process to get a second opinion on the solution and implementation before it’s merged into an upstream branch like a feature branch or the main branch. The reviewer can also act as a second step in identifying bugs, logic problems, uncovered edge cases, or other issues.

This practice empowers code authors and reviewers alike to identify security flaws, adhere to quality standards, and share knowledge across programming languages and frameworks. Reviewers can be from any team or group as long as they’re a domain expert. If the lines of code cover more than one domain, two experts should review the code.

Why are code reviews important?

Developing a strong code review process sets a foundation for continuous improvement and prevents unstable code from shipping to customers. Code reviews should become part of a software development team’s workflow to improve code quality and ensure that every piece of code has been looked at by another team member.

The code review process is also an important part in spreading knowledge throughout an organization. For those reasons and more, 76% of developers who took the 2022 Global DevSecOps Survey said code reviews are “very valuable.”

What are the benefits of code reviews?

• Share knowledge: When software developers review code as soon as a team member makes changes, they can learn new techniques and solutions. Code reviews help junior developers learn from more senior team members, similar to how pair programming effectively helps developers share skills and ideas. By spreading knowledge across the organization, code reviews ensure that no person is a single point of failure. Everyone has the ability to review and offer feedback. Shared knowledge also helps team members take vacation, because everyone on the team has background knowledge on a topic.
• Discover bugs earlier: Rather than discovering bugs after a feature has been shipped and scrambling to release a patch, developers can immediately find and fix problems before customers ever see them. Moving the review process earlier in the software development lifecycle through unit tests helps developers work on fixes with fresh knowledge. When waiting until the end of the lifecycle to do a review, developers often struggle to remember code, solutions, and reasoning. Static analysis is a cheap, efficient way to meet business and customer value.
• Maintain compliance: Developers have various backgrounds and training that influence their coding styles. If teams want to have a standard coding style, code reviews help everyone adhere to the same standards. This is especially important for open source projects that have multiple individuals contributing code. Peer reviews bring in maintainers to assess the code before pushing changes.
• Enhance security: Code reviews create a high level of security, especially when security professionals engage in a targeted review. Application security is integral in software development, and code reviews help detect security issues and ensure compliance. Security team members can review code for vulnerabilities and alert developers to the threat. Code reviews are a great complement to automated scans and tests that detect security vulnerabilities.
• Increase collaboration: When team members work together to create a solution, they feel more ownership of their work and a stronger sense of belonging. Authors and reviewers can work together to find the most effective solutions to meet customer needs. It’s important to strengthen collaboration across the software development lifecycle to prevent information silos and maintain a seamless workflow between teams. To successfully conduct code reviews, it’s important that developers build a code review mindset that has a strong foundation in collaborative development.
• Improve code quality: Code reviews are an important way to ensure you ship high-quality code and quality software. A human who knows your code base can notice code quality issues that automated tests may miss. They can even help you reduce technical debt.

What are the disadvantages of code reviews?

• Longer time to ship: The review time could delay the release process, since reviewers have to collaborate with authors to discuss problems. Depending on a reviewer’s workload, they may not complete a review as fast as the author would like. This challenge can be overcome by using code review tools that include automated testing to find errors. Automated tooling is an effective way to free up developer time so that they can focus on the larger software engineering problems rather than highlight simple lint errors.
• Pull focus from other tasks: Developers often have a heavy workload, and a code review can pull their focus away from other high priority tasks that they’re responsible for delivering. Team members may be forced to decide between completing their task or halting their work in order to do a code review. In either case, work is delayed somewhere across the organization. To reduce this pain point, team members can have a reviewer roulette or a list of domain experts so that a single developer isn’t inundated with review requests.
• Large reviews mean longer review times: If developers have to conduct code reviews on a large change, they could spend a significant amount of time examining the code. Large code reviews are challenging to assess, and developers may naturally move through the process quickly in order to complete it in a timely manner, resulting in decreased feedback quality. Incremental code development prevents this challenge by enabling reviewers to look at a small piece of code several times rather than a large change at once.

Four approaches to code review

Some of these disadvantages can be minimized by selecting the most appropriate code review method for your team. Here are four common approaches to code review:

Pair programming

Pair programming involves two developers collaborating in real time — one writing code (the driver) and one reviewing code (the navigator). Pairing sessions are popular with development teams because teammates collaborate to identify the most effective solution to a challenge. Team members share knowledge and can quickly overcome difficulties by working through ideas together and drawing on their expertise.

The benefits of pair programming

• Transfers knowledge
• Prevents information silos
• Solves complex problems
• Increases morale
• Finds more bugs
• Can be conducted remotely

The drawbacks of pair programming

• Time-consuming
• Can be overused
• Difficult to measure

Over-the-shoulder reviews

In an over-the-shoulder-review, two developers — the author and reviewer — team up in person or remotely through a shared screen and the author explains the completed change proposal and offers reasoning for the chosen solutions. The reviewer asks questions and makes suggestions, similar to how team members collaborate during pairing sessions. The author can make small changes during the review and note larger fixes for a later time.

The benefits of over-the-shoulder reviews

• Easy implementation and completion
• Faster than pair programming

The drawbacks of over-the-shoulder reviews

• Reviewer is detached from code
• Review moves at the author’s pace
• Lack of objectivity
• No verification that changes were made

Tool-assisted reviews

Teams may decide to use tools to save time and ensure the highest quality code is shipped. Tool-assisted reviews can automatically gather changed files and display the differences, or make it easier to provide feedback and have conversations via comments, and incorporate things like static application security testing (SAST) to help identify and remediate vulnerabilities.

The best way to look at tool-assisted reviews is to consider them a complement to other types of reviews. Automated tooling is an effective way to enforce code standards, identify vulnerability, gather metrics, and gather files, but some teams may be tempted to completely rely on tooling and forgo team member involvement to conduct code reviews. Tools should be viewed as an extension of code reviews and a way to enhance the process.

The benefits of tool-assisted reviews

• Easier to gather metrics
• Automated tooling frees up developer focus

The drawbacks of tool-assisted reviews

• Developers must maintain tools
• Will still require teammate reviews

Email pass-around

Email pass-arounds are often used for minor difficulties and small pieces of code. They can be conducted via email or source code management systems. During an email pass-around, an author sends an email containing code changes to reviewers. Email pass-around is similar to over-the-shoulder reviews in that they can be easily implemented and don’t require a strong learning curve or a mentoring stage to teach the author how to make a change.

The benefits of email pass-arounds

• Facilitates remote, asynchronous reviews
• Automatic reviews via SCMs

The drawbacks of email pass-arounds

• Time consuming to gather files
• Difficult to follow conversations
• No definite review end date

Some best practices for code reviews

• Limit code review sessions to keep them productive. Figure out what works for your team — say, no more than one hour or 200 lines of code — and encourage them to stick to that limit.
• Include everyone — including new and senior members of the team — in the process. Code reviews are an excellent way to help newer members of the team get up to speed with the code base — both by reviewing code from and having their code reviewed by more senior developers on the team. Including everyone in your code review process will also make it easier to adjust when people go on vacation or are no longer on the team.
• Distribute code review requests amongst the team. It can be easy for a few developers to get the bulk of code review requests, and this won’t be good for them or the rest of the team — or the code base — long term. You can create a list of domain experts or a reviewer roulette to help avoid this.
• Ask questions and provide helpful context. When you’re reviewing someone’s code, do your best to help both of you learn during the process. Not sure why they did something a different way than you might have? Ask. Have a suggestion for how to improve their code? Don’t forget to tell them why you’re suggesting it in your comment. This will not only help you both learn, but it will likely save time.

By integrating effective code review practices into the fabric of software development, organizations can navigate the challenges of tight deadlines without compromising on the integrity of their products. The dialogue between the code author and the code reviewer lays the groundwork for a robust development process, ensuring that every piece of code not only meets but exceeds established standards.

Embracing code reviews is embracing a future where innovation, collaboration, and security drive the journey toward creating impactful software solutions.

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Code Review — The Ultimate Guide

By Assaf Elovic

The ultimate guide for building your team’s code review process

After conducting hundreds of code reviews, leading R&D teams and pushing several unintentional bugs myself, I’ve decided to share my conclusions for building the ultimate code review process for your team.

This article assumes you know what a code review is. So if you don’t, click here for a great intro.

Let’s quickly state some straightforward reasons as to why you should do code reviews:

• Can help reduce bugs in code.
• Validate that all coding requirements have been filled.
• An effective way to learn from peers and get familiar with the code base.
• Helps maintain code styling across the team.
• Team cohesion — encourage developers to talk to each other on best practices and coding standards.
• Improves overall code quality due to peer pressure.

However, code reviews can be one of the most difficult and time-consuming parts of the software development process.

We’ve all been there. You might have waited days until your code was reviewed. Once it was reviewed you started a ping pong with the reviewer of resubmitting your pull request. All the sudden you’re spending weeks going back and forth. You are context switching between new features and old commits that still need polishing.

If the code review process is not planned right, it could have more cost than value.

This is why it’s extremely important to structure and build a well-defined process for code reviews within your engineering team.

In general, you’ll need to have in place well-defined guidelines for both the reviewer and reviewee, prior to creating a pull request and while it’s being reviewed. More specifically:

Define perquisites for creating pull requests.

I’ve found that the following greatly reduces friction:

• Make sure code compiles successfully.
• Read and annotate your code.
• Build and run tests that validate the scope of your code.
• All code in codebase should be tested.
• Link relevant tickets/items in your task management tool (JIRA for example) to your pull request.
• Do not assign a reviewer until you’ve finalized the above.

Define reviewee responsibilities

While the reviewer is last in the chain of merging your PR, the better it’s handed over by the reviewee, the fewer risks you’ll run into in the long term. Here are some guidelines that can greatly help:

• Communicate with your reviewer — Give your reviewers background about your task. Since most of us pull request authors have likely been reviewers already, simply put yourself in the shoes of the reviewer and ask, “How could this be easier for me?”
• Make smaller pull requests — Making smaller pull requests is the best way to speed up your review time. Keep your pull requests small so that you can iterate more quickly and accurately. In general, smaller code changes are also easier to test and verify as stable. When a pull request is small, it’s easier for the reviewers to understand the context and reason with the logic.
• Avoid changes during the code review — Major changes in the middle of code review basically resets the entire review process. If you need to make major changes after submitting a review, you may want to ship your existing review and follow-up with additional changes. If you need to make major changes after starting the code review process, make sure to communicate this to the reviewer as early in the process as possible.
• Respond to all actionable code review feedback — Even if you don’t implement their feedback, respond to it and explain your reasoning. If there’s something you don’t understand, ask questions inside or outside the code review.
• Code reviews are discussions, not dictation — You can think of most code review feedback as a suggestion more than an order. It’s fine to disagree with a reviewer’s feedback but you need to explain why and give them an opportunity to respond.

Define reviewer responsibilities

Since the reviewer is last in the chain before merging the code, a great part of the responsibility is on him for reducing errors. The reviewer should:

• Be aware to the task description and requirements.
• Make sure to completely understand the code.
• Evaluate all the architecture tradeoffs.
• Divide your comments into 3 categories: Critical, Optional and Positive. The first are comments that the developer must accept to change, and the latter being comments that let the developer know your appreciation for nice pieces of code.

Also, avoid many comments and use Github review instead (see example below).

When you have several comments, you should use the review option in Github, instead of comment each of them separately, and notify the developer (PR owner) when you’re done.

Finally, I’ve found that asking the following questions is a great tool for an overall better and easier reviewing process:

• Am I having difficulty in understanding this code?
• Is there any complexity in the code which could be reduced by refactoring?
• Is the code well organized in a package structure which makes sense?
• Are the class names intuitive and is it obvious what they do?
• Are there any classes which are notably large?
• Are there any particularly long methods?
• Do all the method names seem clear and intuitive?
• Is the code well documented?
• Is the code well tested?
• Are there ways in which this code could be made more efficient?
• Does the code meet our teams styling standards?

There are various effective and different code review practices that vary based on team’s needs. So assume this is my personal opinion and that there are other ways that might work for your team. In the end, building such a sensitive process should be subjective to your companies goals, team’s culture and overall R&D structure.

If you have any questions or feedback for improving these guidelines, please feel free to add a comment below!

If you read this far, thank the author to show them you care. Say Thanks

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• Software development
• Code reviews

Why code reviews matter (and actually save time!)

Spoiler alert: if you love sound architectural decisions and hate being a "critical path" developer, you're gonna love this.

Browse topics

Agile teams are self-organizing, with skill sets that span across the team. This is accomplished, in part, with code review. Code review helps developers learn the code base, as well as help them learn new technologies and techniques that grow their skill sets.

So, what exactly is a code review?

When a developer is finished working on an issue, another developer looks over the code and considers questions like:

• Are there any obvious logic errors in the code?
• Looking at the requirements, are all cases fully implemented?
• Are the new automated tests sufficient for the new code? Do existing automated tests need to be rewritten to account for changes in the code?
• Does the new code conform to existing style guidelines?

Code reviews should integrate with a team’s existing process. For example, if a team is using task branching workflows, initiate a code review after all the code has been written and automated tests have been run and passed–but before the code is merged upstream. This ensures the code reviewer’s time is spent checking for things machines miss, and prevents poor coding decisions from polluting the main line of development. 

What's in it for an agile team?

Every team can benefit from code reviews regardless of development methodology. Agile teams, however, can realize huge benefits because work is decentralized across the team. No one is the  only  person who knows a specific part of the code base. Simply put, code reviews help facilitate knowledge sharing across the code base and across the team.

Code reviews share knowledge

At the heart of all agile teams is unbeatable flexibility: an ability to take work off the backlog and begin execution by  all  team members. As a result, teams are better able to swarm around new work because no one is the "critical path." Full stack engineers can tackle front-end work as well as server-side work.

As code reviews expose developers to new ideas and technologies, they write better and better code.

Code reviews make for better estimates

Remember the section on  estimation ? Estimation is a team exercise, and the team makes better estimates as product knowledge is spread across the team. As new features are added to the existing code, the original developer can provide good feedback and estimation. In addition, any code reviewer is also exposed to the complexity, known issues, and concerns of that area of the code base. The code reviewer, then, shares in the knowledge of the original developer of that part of the code base. This practice creates multiple, informed inputs which, when used for a final estimate always makes that estimate stronger and reliable.

Code reviews enable time off

Nobody likes to be the sole point of contact on a piece of code. Likewise, nobody wants to dive into a critical piece of code they didn’t write– especially during a production emergency. Code reviews share knowledge across the team so that any team member can take up the reins and continue steering the ship. (We love mixed metaphors at Atlassian!) But here's the point: with no single developer the critical path, it also means team members can take time off as needed. If you find yourself tied to a desk on the version control system, code review is an excellent way to find freedom. Freedom to take that needed vacation, or freedom to spend some time working on a different area of the product.

Code reviews mentor newer engineers

A special aspect of agile is that when new members join the team more seasoned engineers mentor the newer members. And code review helps facilitate conversations about the code base. Often, teams have hidden knowledge within the code that surfaces during code review. Newer members, with fresh eyes, discover gnarly, time-plauged areas of the code base that need a new perspective. So, code review also helps ensure new insight is tempered with existing knowledge.

Keep in mind, code review is not just a senior team member reviewing a junior team member’s code. Code review should happen across the team in every direction. Knowledge knows no bounds! Yes, code review can help newer engineers, but by no means should it be used solely as a mentoring exercise. 

But code reviews take time!

Sure, they take time. But that time isn't wasted–far from it.

When done right, code reviews actually save time in the long run.

Here are three ways to optimize for that. 

Share the load

At Atlassian, many teams require two reviews of any code before it's checked into the code base. Sound like a lot of overhead? Really, it's not. When an author selects reviewers, they cast a wide net across the team. Any two engineers can give input. This decentralizes the process so that no one is a bottleneck, and ensures good coverage for code review across the team.

Review before merging

Requiring code review before merging upstream ensures that no code gets in unreviewed. Which means that the questionable architectural decisions made at 2am and the improper use of a factory pattern by the intern are caught before they have a chance to make a lasting (and regrettable) impact on your application.

Use peer pressure to your advantage

When developers know their code will be reviewed by a teammate, they make an extra effort to ensure that all tests are passing and the code is as well-designed as they can make it so the review will go smoothly. That mindfulness also tends to make the coding process itself go smoother and, ultimately, faster.

Don’t wait for a code review if feedback is needed earlier in the development cycle. Feedback early and often makes for better code, so don't be shy about involving others–whenever that may be. It'll make your work better, but it also makes your teammates better code reviewers. And the virtuous cycle continues....!

Agile has had a huge impact on me both professionally and personally as I've learned the best experiences are agile, both in code and in life. You'll often find me at the intersection of technology, photography, and motorcycling. 

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Great software releases start with modular architecture and are powered by great relationships. Learn how to have great agile software releases here.

How to review code effectively: A GitHub staff engineer’s philosophy

GitHub Staff Engineer Sarah Vessels discusses her philosophy of code review, what separates good code review from bad, her strategy for finding and reviewing code, and how to get the most from reviews of her own code.

As a staff engineer at GitHub, code review is one of my main focus areas in my day to day work. Over the past eight years, I’ve reviewed more than 7,000 pull requests. Why so many? Because code review is crucial to building good software and another set of eyes can often spot issues you would have otherwise missed.

I see code review as one of the most important aspects of my job. In fact, whenever I see that a teammate has a pull request ready for code review, I prefer to drop whatever branch I’m working on to review their proposed changes instead. After all, their pull request has already passed the continuous integration (CI) gauntlet and met the bar for their own judgment of “done,” so it’s probably closer to being shippable than my own in-progress work. I’d rather get their code over the finish line than churn an unknown amount of time more to finish my code.

The sooner I provide feedback — “This can be nil and cause an error,” “This looks like an n+1 query,” “It would be great to have a method signature on this” — the faster that feedback can be addressed and the bug squashed or feature shipped.

I’d like to share how I approach code review in hopes that we can all ship better code.

What is code review?

Strictly speaking, code reviews—via pull request reviews on GitHub—allow collaborators to comment on the changes proposed in pull requests, indicate their approval of the changes, or request further changes before the pull request is merged.

I see a pull request as the beginning of conversation. I read it as the author saying “I think this improves on what we have today.” Code review is a great opportunity to shape the product’s implementation. As a code reviewer, my job is to go back and forth in discussion with the author to improve their code by asking questions, questioning assumptions, and generally serving as a second set of eyes.

Fine-tune your code review process

How to find pull requests for review.

I live in my GitHub notifications inbox . It’s one of just a few tabs I pin in my browser, so it’s always available. Any time I’m waiting on CI, I’m in between tasks, starting my day, or generally have a spare moment, I like to check my inbox. I find most of the pull requests I review there. Teams at GitHub tend to have a particular Slack channel they treat as home base, and that’s a good place to share ready-for-review pull requests—it’s one of the other main ways I discover pull requests.

I also have good luck using the GitHub Slack integration to subscribe a Slack channel to new pull requests relevant to my team. To filter which pull requests show up in Slack, I use a label specific to the team, then a ‘subscribe’ command in Slack like /github subscribe your/repo pulls +label:"your-team-label" .

I like to search for outstanding pull requests that may need review with queries like is:open archived:false is:pr org:github -is:draft team-review-requested:github/relevant-codeowner-team . With that query, I find open , unarchived pull requests within the GitHub organization that are not drafts and have relevant codeowner teams as a requested reviewer . I usually will omit the review:required search qualifier because I’m interested in reviewing a pull request even if a teammate has already reviewed it. After all, reviewing code not only helps the author, it helps me stay up to date with changes affecting code I’m responsible for.

Use reviewer teams to manage notifications

You don’t want code changes to ping such a large team that everyone on the team assumes reviewing the change isn’t their responsibility . That can result in pull requests that either languish unreviewed or get merged before they should, because key reviewers missed them in a deluge of notifications. Both of these scenarios affect the quality of the product.

I recommend honing the number of code owner teams you’re on, if you’re able, to keep your notifications manageable. That way, pull requests that land in your inbox aren’t just noise, they’re actually something you feel you should review. While big, catch-all code owner teams can be okay as a fallback option, they aren’t great as a first-line default for automatic review requests. Keep your repository’s CODEOWNERS file well organized, with well-defined code boundaries to go along with it, to limit notifications and help reviewers avoid notification fatigue.

Another way of limiting team-based notifications is to create a first responders team and then use automation to add and remove team members based on a schedule. This can let your team focus on their day-to-day code base, while scheduled first responders get notified of pull requests in your team’s service areas. Using the PagerDuty API , for example, you can determine who is a first responder on a given day. You can then use the Octokit library to add and remove team members.

Standardize code reviews across teams with automation

Repository-level configuration and automation, such as using a CODEOWNERS file and branch protection rules , can be helpful to enforce review process standards across teams. Other standards, such as what’s worth commenting on in a pull request, have to be maintained by us humans. Document how code reviews work within your team to make sure anyone providing a code review or submitting a pull request knows how to get their pull requests reviewed, the expected turnaround time for review, and what automation is in use to facilitate review.

Some teams use a project board to keep track of which pull requests come in for review; I’ve seen this work well for a team that manages a shared API, an area often modified by those outside the team. Other teams depend on GitHub notifications alone, which I’ve seen work well when code ownership is tightly scoped and the team is disciplined about reviewing pull requests as they come in.

If you follow a process unique to your specific team, automation can help communicate expectations with those outside your team. For example, if many other teams depend on your team’s reviews, you can use a bot to automatically leave a comment on any pull request where your team’s review is requested, to tell the author when they can expect to hear from you.

What makes a code review good or bad?

Good code reviews add clarity and push code toward a better state than where it started.

As a reviewer, clarity in communication is key. You’ll want to make clear which of your comments are personal preference and which are blockers for approval. Provide an example of the approach you’re suggesting to elevate your code review and make your meaning even clearer. If you can provide an example from the same repository as the pull request, even better—that further supports your suggestion by encouraging consistent implementations.

By contrast, poor code reviews lack clarity. For example, a blanket approval or rejection without any comments can leave the pull request author wondering if the review was thorough. Even just reiterating your understanding of the pull request author’s intention with your approval can surface whether you and the author have the same understanding.

A code review that is unclear about when its suggestions should be implemented can also be a poor experience for the author. It’s fine to note that existing, unchanged code should be refactored, or an additional case should be handled, but it’s important to specify whether those are precursors to approval. If the pull request is okay to land without your suggestions, make sure to say so. It may be safer to keep a small diff and ship those changes separately, as separate pull requests.

Here’s a code review comment that displays specificity and clearly communicates suggested implementations:

“I see your new method matches the existing style in this file, taking [X] parameters. Having that many parameters hurts readability and implies the function is doing too much. What do you think about refactoring this method and the existing ones in a later pull request to reduce how many parameters they take?”

What this comment does well:

• Provides specific details.
• References specific code or issues.
• Suggests a resolution to the problem.
• Cites evidence or provides an explanation

On the other end of the spectrum, here are some examples of review comments that could be better:

“I don’t like this.” – What doesn’t the reviewer like? Do they have an alternative in mind that they could explicitly state?

Possible improvements:

• “This line is doing a lot, could we simplify it to improve readability?”
• “I think this will have performance problems because of an n+1 query.”
• “Could we use the [preferred framework]’s solution for this instead of writing a custom implementation?”

“This won’t work.” – Why won’t the changes work?

• “This won’t work because [X], see this relevant issue: [issue link].”
• “This was tried before in [pull request link] and it didn’t work because of [X].”
• “If you run into problems with [X], you could try [alternative approach] instead.”

“I think this fixes a bug.” – I love the callout, but is there any additional context, such as an issue link, that could make this more clear?

• “I think this fixes [issue link].”
• “Is this fixing the bug from [issue link]?”
• “This looks like the bug we ran into with [link to failing build]. Thanks for the fix!”

How to give a good code review

Ask questions.

I think of the pull request author as the person with the most context on the changes their pull request is making. I can point out problems I see based on my history—my experience working in a Ruby on Rails monolith, in TypeScript, or with a database that gets a lot of traffic—but I trust the author’s answers to my questions. I treat their understanding of the particulars as better than mine.

I also love to ask questions that involve the assumptions made in the code. What is the shape of the data they’re working with? Does data exist that doesn’t match that shape? Does the code respond to that well? Is the code resource intensive? Will it perform well? As a reviewer, my favorite response is for the author to provide an automated test that verifies the behavior in those scenarios. My second favorite response is empirical data, such as a query from our data warehouse or a Datadog graph that shows why those scenarios aren’t a problem.

As a pull request author, I appreciate receiving questions. When someone asks a question, it makes space for me to explain why I’m confident about my change, citing issues, queries, or graphs as necessary. It also lets me share my knowledge and experience with others. The author not only sees my responses, but also other reviewers and future readers who may be tracking down context on a past decision.

Offer affirmations

Beyond asking questions, it’s good practice to comment on the parts of the pull request that you agree with. These comments can highlight that you read and understood what was being changed, or that you verified some assumption in the code. Here are a few examples:

• “Looks like this matches the pattern used in other classes in this module.”
• “Thanks for adding a test for this!”
• “This is much more readable than before.”

It’s also just nice being on the receiving end of such comments, in my experience. Receiving a code review can sometimes feel draining. When I’m fielding questions and suggestions from several parties, it can be a good boost to get a few comments that don’t ask anything of me and instead support and acknowledge the work I’ve already put in.

Be aware of biases and assumptions

It’s easy to let your biases about the reviewer, or the area of code they’re changing, affect your review. You get used to someone working in an area or having some level of seniority and assume they know what they’re doing—but everyone makes mistakes. Your eyes on their changes, your questions checking their assumptions or validating your own, can catch a problem before it’s deployed.

I’m big on writing tests because they take some of the bias out. When you write a test to check that code works properly, you don’t have to take the author’s word for it , you just look at whether the test passed—provided you get the test right, of course. 😅

I’m also big on junior developers asking senior developers questions in code review, even if they think their question is silly or has an obvious answer. If it’s not obvious to you, that’s valid. It won’t be obvious to someone else either! Ask the question, make the space for the author to write down their answer, and preserve that bit of education for those who come later.

To approve or not

I see my review as a blocking gate that can stop another person from improving our product, so I withhold approval conscientiously. I will often have personal preferences and suggest optional changes I’d like to see the author make, but I won’t withhold an approval based on those alone. If I have suggestions for someone’s pull request, but their pull request as it is won’t break production, negatively impact users, or otherwise cause problems, I will approve with those comments. The author can choose to address my feedback before they merge their pull request, or they can follow up in another branch.

Keep in mind the importance of your suggestion when you’re reviewing code. Is it worth delaying the ship to get your suggestion addressed? Is it worth the whole cycle of the author seeing your feedback, making the suggested changes, waiting for CI, a re-review, deployment and finally merging? If a suggestion’s absence isn’t going to make someone’s day worse, let the author decide if or when to make the suggested change.

The ‘Request changes’ option stops a pull request from being merged until the reviewer comes back and approves it. I very rarely use it, as it usually feels too heavy-handed. I trust my team to know when to approve a pull request, so a teammate’s approval is fine in place of mine. Likewise, I trust the pull request author to respect my feedback and consider it, not just blindly merging because someone else approved but I didn’t. About the only time I’ll choose the ‘Request changes’ option is when I think there is an immediate security issue and I’m worried they won’t see my concern before merging.

How to get the most out of code reviews

Review your own code.

GitHub Senior Software Engineer Paul Smith taught me to review my own pull request before asking others to do so, and I would advise you to do the same. Take a first pass and leave comments inline on non-obvious changes or ones you would ask about if you saw them in someone else’s pull request. A self-review can also help determine if a pull request is too big and would benefit from being split up .

Shout-out: if you care about keeping your pull requests small, you can make use of lerebear/sizeup-action to automatically apply a label to pull requests indicating their complexity and size.

Be welcoming of post-merge reviews

If I happen to merge a pull request before someone gets a chance to review it, I still welcome their review. If my pull request broke something or had unintended consequences, commenting as much on the pull request leaves that breadcrumb trail to help future readers track down what happened!

If I receive a review on a merged pull request, I’ll address the feedback like I would have before the pull request landed. Maybe that’ll be a comment to explain my perspective, maybe it’ll be additional pull requests to iterate on the code I originally shipped. Maybe it’ll be opening new issues to capture additional work to be done.

Use draft pull requests

When you create a new pull request, you have the option to set the pull request as a draft. I lean heavily on the draft stage to indicate whether or not I want reviews. For example, if a required CI build is failing or I’m just not finished yet, I’ll keep it as a draft. I tend to expect the same from others’ pull requests: if it’s a draft, I assume the author isn’t ready for reviews. If it’s marked as ready for review, I assume that getting enough approvals is all that’s preventing them from deploying the pull request.

The draft status implies that a pull request is not finished, so I move pull requests back to draft when resolving merge conflicts or addressing reviewer feedback. If I have to modify the code, I’ll mark my pull request as a draft first so as not to overwhelm people who have already reviewed it. When I move it back to ‘ready’, it sends a GitHub notification to those reviewers so they can look at it again.

Be gracious

The expression, “You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar,” comes to mind. I want reviews on my pull requests, so I like to reply to comments on my pull requests—especially if I disagree with the reviewer. Even if I don’t write a reply to a review comment, I’ll often react with a 👍 to indicate I agree or a ❤ to say thank you.

I want reviewers to trust that their suggestions won’t be forgotten, so I keep them in the loop via comments. If I agree with their suggestion—to go further refactoring existing code, for example—I may say as much while also pushing back about making that change in the current pull request. When I address their feedback in a later pull request, I come back to provide a link and let the reviewer know their feedback didn’t go unheard.

I’ll also tag them in later pull requests where I implement the suggested changes and include a note saying “This addresses @so-and-so’s feedback from <previous pull request URL>.” This both provides context for other readers and acts as a shout-out to the original reviewer, giving them credit for the idea.

When you follow through on a promise to address feedback in a later branch, that helps build trust with your reviewer, which can help them feel comfortable approving your future pull requests because they know that you won’t leave something incomplete.

Code review’s importance for product quality can’t be overstated, especially in the age of AI code generation. Many times in my career, a bug has been caught or an incident avoided simply by having that second set of eyes. Code review is well worth the time investment, whether spent in daily reviews, in ironing out processes, or in building automation to support it. It’s faster and less painful for developers to review pull requests thoroughly now than to deal with a problem later that’s already shipped to production.

Thank you for caring enough about code quality to read my philosophy on code review. Have you checked your review queue lately? Maybe now is a good time to put these ideas into action.

If you want to learn more about how to use pull request reviews on GitHub, check out the post on GitHub Community by Staff DevOps Architect Mickey Gousset and Staff DevOps Architect Joshua Johanning discussing 5 Tips for Reviewing a Pull Request .

• code review

Sarah Vessels

@cheshire137

Staff Software Engineer, GitHub

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Mastering Code Reviews: Best Practices for Effective Development Workflows

Code Reviews, the Biggest SDLC Bottleneck?

Code review, while a crucial component of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), can often be perceived as a bottleneck for several reasons:

• Balanced quality and speed: Code reviews prioritize the code quality. This often requires time and attention to details, slowing down the rapid pace at which developers might be churning out code. The inherent tension between wanting to maintain high-quality standards and wanting to release features quickly can cause delays.
• Limited expertise: Not all team members may be equipped to review certain pieces of code, especially if it's in a domain or technology they're unfamiliar with. Waiting for the right expert to be available can introduce delays.
• PR size : In a busy development environment, the sheer volume of code changes can be overwhelming. Large pull requests (PRs) or merge requests are harder to review than smaller ones. It takes time to understand, evaluate, and provide meaningful feedback on large chunks of code.

• Asynchronous communication: Developers may be spread across different time zones, especially in today's remote-first work environments. Waiting for feedback from a colleague in a different time zone can introduce delays.
• Lack of clear guidelines/scoping : Without a clear set of guidelines or a checklist for code reviews, the process can become subjective. Different reviewers might focus on different aspects, leading to inconsistent feedback and prolonged back-and-forth discussions.
• Cognitive load: Reviewing code requires a high degree of concentration. A reviewer needs to understand the context, the problem the code is solving, and any potential implications of the code changes. This cognitive load can be taxing and time-consuming.
• Avoiding difficult conversations: Sometimes, reviewers might find issues with the code but might hesitate to give negative feedback, fearing conflicts or the possibility of coming across as overly critical. This can delay the review process as they might take more time to phrase their feedback or avoid it altogether.
• Dependency chains: Code awaiting review might be dependent on other code that's also under review. This creates a chain of dependencies where one delayed review can hold up several others.
• Tool limitations: While there are many tools available for code reviews, they might not always be optimized for the specific needs of a team. The wrong tool can introduce inefficiencies in the review process.
• Continuous integration (CI): Sometimes, the code review process might be waiting on automated tests to pass in a CI environment. If there's a queue or if the CI process is slow, it can add to the delay.

While code reviews can introduce delays, it's essential to remember that their primary purpose is to ensure code quality, maintainability, and knowledge transfer among team members. Addressing the above challenges through better processes, tools, training, and communication can help to optimize the code review process within the SDLC.

In this article, we’ll cover the basics of code reviews and why they are important, the code review process and best practices, the common pitfalls and how to avoid them, and we’ll provide you with an overview of the tools and platforms to help streamline code reviews. 

The Basics of Code Review

Brief History of Code Review

The history of code review traces its roots back to the early days of software engineering and has evolved over time to address the changing needs and technologies in the software development field.

Early Peer Reviews

Before the term "code review" became widespread, the concept of reviewing work done by peers was already practiced in other fields. In software engineering, this approach became more formalized in the 1970s and 1980s as the industry began to recognize the importance of quality assurance.

Structured Walkthroughs

One of the earliest formalized methods of code review was the " structured walkthrough ". This process involved the author of the code presenting their work to a group of colleagues. The group would then critique the code and suggest improvements.

Fagan Inspections

In 1976, Michael Fagan of IBM formalized a code inspection method known as the " Fagan Inspection ". This method included roles such as the author, inspector, reader, and moderator, and it had a defined process comprising stages like planning, overview, preparation, inspection, rework, and follow-up.

From Formal to Lightweight Reviews

While methods like Fagan Inspections were detailed and rigorous, they were also time-consuming. As software development methodologies evolved, especially with the rise of Agile and Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD), there was a move toward more lightweight, iterative code review processes. Tools like pull requests in Git-based platforms (like GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket) facilitated this shift.

Modern Tools and Practices

The rise of distributed version control systems, especially Git, has transformed the code review landscape . Platforms such as GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab introduced features that allowed developers to review and comment on code changes directly within the platform. These tools made it easier for teams, including distributed teams, to collaborate, discuss, and iterate on code changes.

Automation and Static Analysis

As technology advanced, tools were developed to automate parts of the code review process . Static code analysis tools could automatically detect certain code patterns, bugs, or potential vulnerabilities, allowing human reviewers to focus on the logic and design aspects of the code.

In conclusion, the practice of code review has evolved over the decades from formal, structured processes to more agile and tool-integrated practices. The emphasis throughout, however, has remained on improving code quality, fostering collaboration, and ensuring that software is maintainable and free of critical errors.

The Primary Goals of Code Review

The primary goal of code review is to ensure and improve the quality of software. This overarching objective can be broken down into several facets:

• Identifying and correcting bugs : One of the main reasons for code reviews is to catch errors or bugs that might have been overlooked by the original developer. By having another set of eyes (or multiple sets) review the code, the likelihood of spotting and addressing these issues increases.
• Maintaining code consistency: Code reviews help ensure that the codebase remains consistent in terms of style, structure, and design. This consistency makes the code easier to read, understand, and maintain in the long run.
• Ensuring code security: Security vulnerabilities can be introduced inadvertently. Through code reviews, developers can spot and rectify potential security issues before they become larger problems.
• Knowledge sharing and transfer : Code reviews facilitate the sharing of knowledge among team members. Developers become familiar with different parts of the codebase, learn new techniques, and understand the rationale behind certain decisions.
• Promoting best practices: Code reviews help reinforce best practices in coding, design patterns, and software architecture. They act as a platform for team members to share and discuss better ways to achieve a certain task or function.
• Building team cohesion: The collaborative nature of code reviews fosters improved communication and understanding among team members. They become more aligned in their approach to coding and problem-solving.
• Validating software design: Beyond just the code's syntax and logic, reviews can also validate the overall software design. Reviewers can provide feedback on the architecture, data flows, and other high-level design aspects.
• Documentation and comments: Ensuring that code is well-documented and that comments are meaningful is another goal of code reviews. Proper documentation aids future maintenance and provides clarity for other developers who might work on the code.

While ensuring and improving code quality stands out as the primary goal, the benefits of code reviews span various aspects of software development, from technical to interpersonal.

Why Code Reviews Are Essential

Code Review for Quality Assurance

• Error detection: A key aspect of quality assurance is the early detection and correction of errors. When multiple developers review code, the probability of identifying and rectifying mistakes, bugs, or inefficiencies increases.
• Standard enforcement: Code reviews help enforce coding standards and best practices. Consistent adherence to standards is vital to ensure that the software behaves reliably and predictably.
• Security: During the review process, vulnerabilities or potential security loopholes can be identified and addressed. Given the critical importance of software security, this facet of code reviews is vital for quality assurance.

Code Review for Knowledge Transfer

• Shared understanding: When developers review each other's code, they gain insights into different parts of the codebase and the rationale behind specific implementations. This shared understanding aids in overall system comprehension.
• Mentorship: More experienced developers can provide guidance and suggestions to less experienced team members during reviews, helping them learn and improve their skills.
• Continuous learning: Even seasoned developers can learn new techniques, approaches, or language features from their peers during the review process.

Code Review to Foster Team Collaboration

• Unified vision: By collaboratively reviewing code, team members align their understanding and vision of the project. This alignment helps in achieving project objectives more efficiently.
• Open communication: Code reviews provide a structured platform for open communication. Developers discuss, debate, and iterate on code changes, fostering a culture of constructive feedback.
• Builds trust: When team members review and learn from each other, it cultivates mutual trust and respect. This trust is essential for a healthy and productive team environment.

Code Review to Ensure Code Maintainability

• Consistency: Code reviews help maintain a consistent coding style and structure across the codebase. Consistent code is easier to read, understand, and modify.
• Detect code smells: "Code smells" are indications that certain parts of the code might be problematic in the future, even if they aren't causing immediate issues. Code reviews can help identify and address these early on.
• Documentation: Reviewers can highlight areas where comments or documentation might be lacking or unclear. Proper documentation ensures that future developers can understand and modify the code without undue difficulty.

In essence, code reviews serve as a multifaceted tool in software development. They not only ensure that the software is of high quality but also play a pivotal role in team dynamics, knowledge dissemination, and the long-term health of the software project.

The Code Review Process

The Code “Pre-Review”

Before submitting code for review, there are several preliminary checks and actions that can be taken to streamline the review process:

• Local testing: The developer should run the code locally to ensure that the changes work as expected and that no obvious bugs are introduced.
• Linting: Linters are tools that automatically analyze code to detect various issues, mostly related to style and formatting. Running a linter ensures the code conforms to the established coding standards. Examples include ESLint for JavaScript, Pylint for Python, and RuboCop for Ruby.
• Static analysis: Static code analysis tools examine code without executing it to identify potential problems, such as logical errors, unused variables, or potential vulnerabilities. Tools like SonarQube, Coverity, and Checkmarx are popular static analysis tools.
• Unit tests: If applicable, new or modified unit tests should be written to cover the changes. All tests, including existing ones, should be run to ensure nothing is broken.
• Commit message: Proper commit messages should be written to provide context about the changes, making it easier for reviewers to understand the rationale behind them.

To monitor the code pre-review process, you can leverage:

The Coding Time Metric

The Coding Time metric measures the time elapsed between start of development (either the first commit or PR creation date) and the review initiation. This time includes the coding time, the automated testing phase as well as the review pick-up time. 

The Commit Keyword Usage Report

The Commit Keyword Usage Report provides an overview of the first keyword used in each commit message. This report can help classify reviews by priority and ensure proper naming conventions are followed across team members.

The Main Code Review (Manual Inspection)

Once the code is ready and submitted for review, the core phase of the review process begins:

• Assign reviewers: Based on the nature of the changes and the codebase's area, appropriate reviewers are assigned. These could be peers, senior developers, or domain experts.
• Review for logic and design: The reviewers evaluate the submitted code for its logic and design, ensuring it's efficient, clean, and follows established architectural patterns.
• Feedback and discussion: Feedback is provided, usually in the form of inline comments on specific lines of code or general comments about the entire set of changes. The developer and reviewers can then discuss, clarify doubts, and iterate on the feedback.
• Multiple rounds: Often, the code review process involves multiple rounds where the developer makes revisions based on feedback, and reviewers inspect the changes again until all parties are satisfied.

To monitor the main code review process, you can leverage:

The Review Time Metric

The Review Time Metric calculates the time elapsed between the first submission review and the PR approval. 

The Pull Request Review Ratio

With the Pull Request Review Ratio , you can ensure that all PRs get the minimum required reviews.

The Average PR Size Metric

With the Average PR Size Metric , you can track the volume of code line changes (deletions + additions) performed on PRs, ultimately isolating big PRs likely to cause delay in both coding and review time.

Post-Code Review Actions

After the review process is concluded:

• Merging: Once the reviewers approve the changes, the code can be merged into the target branch (often the main or master branch).
• Continuous integration: After merging, the code often goes through a continuous integration (CI) process where automated tests are run, and the application is built to ensure there are no integration issues.
• Follow-ups: Sometimes, during the review, certain topics might be flagged for further discussion or exploration but aren't deemed critical enough to block the current changes. These can be noted as "follow-up" items. They might result in new tasks, tickets, or further reviews in the future.
• Document learnings: Any significant insights, common pitfalls, or best practices that emerged from the review can be documented. This helps to refine the development and review process for future tasks.

Remember, the exact steps and tools in a code review process might vary based on the team's preferences, the nature of the project, and the tools in use. The essence, however, remains largely consistent: to collaboratively ensure that code changes are of high quality and align with the project's goals.

To monitor the post-code review process, you can leverage:

The Merge Time Metric

The Merge Time Metric calculates the average time elapsed between last review approval to the PR merged into a specific branch. It helps isolate the post-review cycle time, ensuring that approved PRs are not forgotten in the process.

The Green Build Ratio Metric

The Green Build Ratio Metric helps ensure that the merged PRs have a green build status.

Code Review Best Practices

Adopting code review best practices is pivotal in cultivating a constructive, efficient, and collaborative software development environment, ensuring not just the quality of code but also fostering continuous learning and teamwork. Let’s dive into it.

Code Reviews Start with a Positive Tone

Why: Setting a positive tone encourages a collaborative and receptive atmosphere. It ensures that feedback is perceived as constructive rather than critical.

How: Begin your comments by acknowledging the effort or aspects of the code that you found well-done before pointing out areas of improvement.

Be Specific in Your Code Review Feedback

Why: Vague feedback can be confusing and might not lead to the desired improvements.

How: Point out specific lines or sections of code when giving feedback. Instead of saying, "This method is too complex," you might say, "Consider breaking down this method into smaller functions for better readability."

Limit the Scope of Code Reviews

Why: Extremely large code reviews can be overwhelming and decrease the chances of catching issues.

How: Encourage developers to make smaller, more frequent pull requests. If a large review is unavoidable, consider breaking the review into parts or sections.

Use a Standardized Checklist for Your Code Reviews

Why: A checklist helps ensure consistency across reviews and reminds reviewers of common issues to look for.

How: Create a list of items to check during every code review, like ensuring new methods have comments, checking for potential security vulnerabilities, or verifying the presence of tests for new features.

Prioritize Automated Tests Before Code Review

Why: Automating tests can catch a plethora of issues before human review, allowing the reviewers to focus on the logic and design.

How: Ensure that a CI (continuous integration) pipeline runs unit tests, integration tests, linters, and static analysis tools before the code is reviewed by humans.

Avoid Code Review Bikeshedding (Focus on the Big Issues)

Why: Engaging in prolonged debates about trivial matters can divert attention from more pressing issues and delay the review process.

How: Focus on the core logic, design, and potential impact of the code changes. If discussions start to veer off into minor style or preference debates, steer them back or defer those discussions for later.

Perform Code Reviews Regularly and Promptly

Why: Timely feedback is more relevant and allows developers to address issues while the context is still fresh.

How: Allocate specific times during the day or week for code reviews. Using tools that notify reviewers when a review is requested can also help in timely reviews.

Always Provide Context for Your Code Review Feedback

Why: Context helps the author understand the reasoning behind the feedback, making it more actionable.

How: Instead of just pointing out an issue, explain why it's an issue. For instance, rather than saying, "Avoid using global variables," you might add, "Global variables can introduce unintended side effects and make the code harder to maintain."

Remember to Review the Code, Not the Coder

Why: Code reviews should be a critique of the work, not the individual. Making it personal can lead to defensiveness and conflict.

How: Frame feedback objectively. Avoid using personal pronouns. For example, say, "This method can be refactored for clarity," instead of "You wrote a confusing method."

Implementing these best practices can greatly enhance the effectiveness of code reviews, promote a positive and collaborative team culture, and ultimately lead to better software quality.

Common Pitfalls in Code Reviews and How to Avoid Them

Overly Critical Code Review

When a reviewer focuses solely on flaws and expresses feedback in a harsh or negative manner, it can demoralize the developer, breed defensiveness, and inhibit productive dialogue.

• Start with positive feedback.
• Frame critiques as suggestions or questions.
• Use neutral language, focusing on the code and not the coder.

Don'ts:

• Avoid personal or pointed language.
• Don't make assumptions about the coder's intentions or capabilities.
• Avoid being overly pedantic on non-critical issues.

Skipping the Code Review Due to Time Constraints

Rushing through or completely skipping a code review due to time pressures can lead to undiscovered bugs, design flaws, or inefficiencies making their way into the production code.

• Set aside dedicated time for code reviews in the development cycle.
• If pressed for time, prioritize reviewing critical components or areas with substantial changes.
• Encourage smaller, more frequent pull requests for easier reviews.
• Don't make a habit of bypassing reviews.
• Avoid merging code without at least one review.
• Don't let "deadline pressures" compromise the quality of the codebase.

Not Checking for Potential Security Vulnerabilities During Code Review

Overlooking potential security issues during code review can lead to vulnerabilities in the application, risking data breaches, and other malicious attacks.

• Familiarize yourself with common security vulnerabilities (like those in the OWASP Top 10 ).
• Check for proper data validation, authentication, and authorization mechanisms.
• Ensure sensitive data is protected, encrypted, or redacted.
• Don't assume that external libraries or third-party code is always secure.
• Avoid leaving debug or test code that could expose sensitive data or functionality.
• Don't neglect potential red flags even if they seem minor.

Relying Too Heavily on Tools Without Manual Checks 

While automated tools (linters, static analysis, etc.) are invaluable, they cannot catch every issue, especially those related to logic, design, and contextual understanding of the application.

• Use tools as a first pass to catch common or straightforward issues.
• Always perform manual reviews to assess logic, design patterns, and application-specific nuances.
• Combine insights from tools with human judgment and expertise.
• Don't blindly trust tool results without understanding their output.
• Avoid treating tools as a complete substitute for human review.
• Don't ignore tool warnings without valid reasons.

In essence, while code reviews are instrumental in maintaining and enhancing the quality of code, avoiding these pitfalls is essential to ensure that the process remains constructive, efficient, and effective.

Tools and Platforms for Streamlined Code Reviews

Software development analytics to monitor and improve the code review process.

Tools like Keypup provide insights into the software development process, capturing metrics like cycle time, review time, reviews volume and frequency, pull request sizes, and more, to inform and improve development practices.

How to leverage Keypup for the code review process:

• Monitor key metrics to identify bottlenecks or inefficiencies in the development and review process by leveraging the Cycle Time Dashboard .
• Use historical data to track improvements over time and gauge the impact of changes to the development process.

Sign-up and accelerate your engineering organization today !

Leverage code collaboration tools to manage code reviews efficiently.

Code collaboration tools such as GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket provide integrated environments for hosting code repositories, creating pull requests, and conducting code reviews.

How to leverage code collaboration tools for the code review process:

• Utilize pull request (or merge request) features to initiate code reviews.
• Make use of integrated comment systems for inline feedback.
• Use built-in integrations with CI/CD tools to automatically run tests before reviews.
• Take advantage of platform-specific extensions or plugins for enhanced review capabilities.

Use Linting and Static Analysis Tools to Accelerate the Code Review Process

Linters and static analysis tools scan the codebase for syntactical errors, stylistic issues, potential bugs, and even security vulnerabilities without executing the code.

How to leverage linting and statics analysis tools for the code review process:

• Integrate these tools into the development environment or CI/CD pipeline to catch issues early.
• Customize rule sets based on the team's coding standards and guidelines.
• Use the tools as an initial filter before manual code reviews to focus on logic and design issues.

Use Continuous Integration and Deployment Tools (CI/CD) to Facilitate the Code Review Process

CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, Travis CI, CircleCI, GitHub Actions, and GitLab CI/CD, automate the building, testing, and deployment of applications, ensuring that the code integrates well and passes all tests before deployment.

How to leverage these tools in your code review process:

• Set up automated build and test pipelines to run whenever code is committed or a pull request is created.
• Integrate linting and static analysis tools within the CI process.
• Use CI results as a prerequisite for manual code reviews, ensuring only code that passes automated checks is reviewed.
• Implement automated deployment for code that passes both automated and manual reviews.

Incorporating these tools into the code review process not only streamlines the workflow but also ensures consistent code quality, reduces manual review burden, and fosters a culture of continuous improvement.

Concluding Thoughts: Measuring for Success in the Code Review Process

In the dynamic world of software development, code reviews stand out as an invaluable practice, enabling teams to collaboratively refine and enhance code quality. As we've explored, the right methodologies, tools, and a proactive approach can make this process effective and efficient.

However, it's crucial to remember that what gets measured gets improved. With platforms like Keypup, teams can gain actionable insights into their software development process, honing in on metrics that truly matter. By consistently monitoring cycle times, review durations, pull request sizes, and other key indicators, developers and managers can quickly identify and address bottlenecks, optimizing every phase of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), including the critical code review step.

In essence, while tools, best practices, and collaboration play central roles, it's the strategic measurement and continuous improvement that truly set apart great development teams. As you embark on or refine your code review journey, always keep metrics at the forefront, ensuring that your efforts align with the overarching goals of delivering high-quality software in an agile and responsive manner.

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How to Make Good Code Reviews Better

I have been doing day-to-day code reviews for over a decade now. The benefits of code reviews are plenty: someone spot checks your work for errors, they get to learn from your solution, and the collaboration helps to improve the organization’s overall approach to tooling and automation. If you’re not currently doing code reviews in your organization, start now. It’ll make everyone a better engineer. Plenty of people and organizations have shared their code review best practices and what the definition of good code reviews mean to them. Guides from Google , the SmartBear team , and engineer Philipp Hauer are all excellent reads. Below is my personal take on what good code reviews look like and how to make them even better at the team and organizational level. This is in the context of the tech environment I have been working at - currently at Uber, and before that at Skype/Microsoft and Skyscanner. Good code reviews are the bar that all of us should strive for. They cover common and easy to follow best practices that any team can get started with, while ensuring high-quality and helpful reviews for the long term. Better code reviews are where engineers keep improving how they do code reviews. These code reviews look at the code change in the context of the codebase, of who is requesting it and in what situation. These reviews adjust their approach based on the context and situation. The goal not only being a high-quality review, but also to help the developers and teams requesting the review to be more productive.

Areas Covered by the Code Review

Good code reviews look at the change itself and how it fits into the codebase. They will look through the clarity of the title and description and "why" of the change . They cover the correctness of the code, test coverage, functionality changes, and confirm that they follow the coding guides and best practices. They will point out obvious improvements, such as hard to understand code, unclear names, commented out code, untested code, or unhandled edge cases. They will also note when too many changes are crammed into one review, and suggest keeping code changes single-purposed or breaking the change into more focused parts. Better code reviews look at the change in the context of the larger system, as well as check that changes are easy to maintain. They might ask questions about the necessity of the change or how it impacts other parts of the system. They look at abstractions introduced and how these fit into the existing software architecture. They note maintainability observations, such as complex logic that could be simplified, improving test structure, removing duplications, and other possible improvements. Engineer Joel Kemp describes great code reviews as a contextual pass following an initial, light pass .

Tone of the Review

The tone of code reviews can greatly influence morale within teams. Reviews with a harsh tone contribute to a feeling of a hostile environment with their microaggressions. Opinionated language can turn people defensive, sparking heated discussions. At the same time, a professional and positive tone can contribute to a more inclusive environment. People in these environments are open to constructive feedback and code reviews can instead trigger healthy and lively discussions. Good code reviews ask open-ended questions instead of making strong or opinionated statements. They offer alternatives and possible workarounds that might work better for the situation without insisting those solutions are the best or only way to proceed. These reviews assume the reviewer might be missing something and ask for clarification instead of correction. Better code reviews are also empathetic. They know that the person writing the code spent a lot of time and effort on this change. These code reviews are kind and unassuming. They applaud nice solutions and are all-round positive.

Approving vs Requesting Changes

Once a reviewer completes their review, they can either mark it approved, block the review with change requests, or not set a specific status, leaving it in a “not yet approved” state. How reviewers use the approve and request changes statuses is telling of the code reviews. Good code reviews don't approve changes while there are open-ended questions. However, they make it clear which questions or comments are non-blocking or unimportant, marking them distinctively. They are explicit when approving a change - e.g. adding a thumbs up comment like “looks good!”. Some places use acronyms like LGTM —these also work, but be aware that newcomers could misinterpret these insider acronyms for something else. Good code reviews are equally explicit when they are requesting a follow-up, using the code review tool or team convention to communicate this. Better code reviews are firm on the principle but flexible on the practice: sometimes, certain comments are addressed by the author with a separate, follow-up code change. For changes that are more urgent than others, reviewers try to make themselves available for quicker reviews.

From Code Reviews to Talking to Each Other

Code reviews are usually done asynchronously and in writing through a code review tool. This is usually out of convenience, to enable remote code reviews, and to allow multiple people to review the same code change. But when is it time to stop using the tool—however good it might be—and start talking face to face about the code? Good code reviews leave as many comments and questions as are needed. If the revision does not address all of them, they will note those as well. When the conversation gets into a long back-and-forth, reviewers will try to switch to talking to the author in-person instead of burning more time using the code review tool. Better code reviews will proactively reach out to the person making the change after they do a first pass on the code and have lots of comments and questions. These people have learned that they save a lot of time, misunderstandings, and hard feelings this way. The fact that there are many comments on the code indicates that there is likely some misunderstanding on either side. These kinds of misunderstandings are easier identified and resolved by talking things through.

Nitpicks are are unimportant comments, where the code could be merged without even addressing these. These could be things like variable declarations being in alphabetical order, unit tests following a certain structure, or brackets being on the same line. Good code reviews make it clear when changes are unimportant nitpicks. They usually mark comments like these distinctively, adding the “nit:” prefix to them. Too many of these can become frustrating and take the attention away from the more important parts of the review, so reviewers aim to not go overboard with these. Better code reviews realize that too many nitpicks are a sign of lack of tooling or a lack of standards. Reviewers who come across these frequently will look at solving this problem outside the code review process. For example, many of the common nitpick comments can be solved via automated linting. Those that cannot can usually be resolved by the team agreeing to certain standards and following them—perhaps even automating them, eventually.

Code Reviews for New Joiners

Starting at a new company is overwhelming for most people. The codebase is new, the style of programming is different than before, and people review your code very differently. So should code reviews be gentler for new starters, to get them used to the new environment, or should they keep the bar just as high, as it is for everyone else? Good code reviews use the same quality bar and approach for everyone, regardless of their job title, level or when they joined the company. Following the above, code reviews have a kind tone, request changes where needed, and will reach out to talk to reviewers when they have many comments. Better code reviews pay additional attention to making the first few reviews for new joiners a great experience. Reviewers are empathetic to the fact that the recent joiner might not be aware of all the coding guidelines and might be unfamiliar with parts of the code. These reviews put additional effort into explaining alternative approaches and pointing to guides. They are also very positive in tone, celebrating the first few changes to the codebase that the author is suggesting.

Cross-Office, Cross-Time Zone Reviews

Code reviews get more difficult when reviewers are not in the same location. They are especially challenging when reviewers are sitting in very different time zones. I have had my fair share of these reviews over the years, modifying code owned by teams in the US and Asia, while being based in Europe. Good code reviews account for the time zone difference when they can. Reviewers aim to review the code in the overlapping working hours between offices. For reviews with many comments, reviewers will offer to chat directly or do a video call to talk through changes. Better code reviews notice when code reviews repeatedly run into timezone issues and look for a systemic solution, outside the code review framework. Let's say a team from Europe is frequently changing a service that triggers code reviews from the US-based owner of this service. The system-level question is why these changes are happening so frequently. Are the changes done in the right codebase or should another system be changed? Will the frequency of changes be the same or go down over time? Assuming the changes are done in the right codebase and the frequency will not go down, can the cross-office dependency be broken in some way? Solutions to these kinds of problems are often not simple and could involve refactoring, creating of new services/interfaces or tooling improvements. But solving dependencies like this will make the life of both teams easier and their progress more efficient for the long term, meaning the return on investment is often quite impressive.

Organizational Support

The way companies and their engineering organizations approach code reviews is a big element of how efficient they can be. Organizations that view them as unimportant and trivial end up investing little in making reviews easier. In cultures like this, it might be tempting to just do away with code reviews entirely. Engineers advocating for doing better code reviews might feel isolated, without support from above and eventually give up. The result is an organization where problems continue to repeat and compound upon themselves. Organizations with good code reviews ensure that all engineers take part in the code review process—even those that might be working on solo projects. They encourage raising the quality bar, and teams facilitate healthy discussions on code review approaches both at the team and org level. These companies often have code review guides for larger codebases that engineers initiated and wrote. Organizations like this recognise that code reviews take up a good chunk of engineers' time. Many of these companies will add code reviews as expectations to the developer job competencies, expecting senior engineers to spend a larger chunk of their time reviewing the code of others. Organizations with better code reviews have hard rules around no code making it to production without a code review—just as business logic changes don't make it to production without automated tests. These organizations have learned that the cost of cutting corners is not worth it; instead, they have processes for expedited reviews for urgent cases. These organizations invest in developer productivity, including working continually to develop more efficient code reviews and tooling improvements. Helpful engineering executives don't need convincing on the benefits of code reviews and other engineering best practices. Instead, they support initiatives on better tooling or more efficient code review processes that come from teams. When people come across reviews that feel hostile, they feel they can speak up and have support all-round to resolve the issue. Senior engineers and managers consider code reviews that are not up to the bar just as much of an issue as sloppy code or poor behavior. Both engineers and engineering managers feel empowered to improve how code reviews are done.

Start With Good, Make it Better

Good code reviews already have lots of good effort going into them. They do a thorough review of the change itself, avoid being opinionated with the tone of comments, and make nitpicks clear. They maintain a consistent bar, regardless of who is requesting the review and try to make cross-time zone reviews less painful by paying additional attention to these. Organizations that have good reviews ensure that every developer regularly receives and does code reviews. This is already a high bar—but if you get here, don’t stop. Code reviews are one of the best ways to improve your skills, mentor others, and learn how to be a more efficient communicator. Get to better code reviews by continuously improving on the details, but also start looking at changes at a high level as well. Be empathetic in the tone of comments and think of ways outside the code review process to eliminate frequent nitpicks. Make code reviews especially welcoming for new starters and look for systemic solutions for painful cross-time zone reviews. Organizations that are forward-looking encourage investing in tooling and process improvements to make code reviews better, reaping more of the benefits. ------- Gergely is currently an engineering lead in Amsterdam. This blog post originally appeared on Gergely’s blog, The Pragmatic Engineer . If you’d like to read more from Gergely, you can subscribe to his monthly newsletter for his articles on engineering, tech leadership and distributed systems. If you would like to contribute articles to the Stack Overflow blog, send an email to [email protected].

How To Review Someone Else’s Code: Tips and Best Practices

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Imagine you have a co-worker or friend who’s asked you to review a piece of code for them. You might be thinking, “Wait, I don’t really know what that means.” Maybe you’re too nervous to say that to your colleague. Not to worry — we’ve all been there.

While your first code review might seem like yet another test of your abilities, it’s actually just another set of eyes on a piece of code to help spot any problems before it gets launched. Even if you’re a new developer or still learning code, you can help people out by reviewing their code.

In the following article, we’ll help to demystify what it means to review code . We’ll even lay out a five-step process to follow so you can review someone else’s code easily and clearly. Check out the video below. Then read on to learn more.

What is a code review?

A code review is a collaborative process where other members of your development team look over your code to give you:

• Potential improvements
• A list of outstanding questions

In practice, this means that your fellow developers will either add comments within your code or send you a list of questions to answer. They could also sit down with you at your computer and talk through a few suggestions on how to make your code better. It’s a good idea to ask someone who will eventually use the code to help you review it.

Why is it a good idea to review code?

Reviewing code helps maintain best practices for the code and keep a certain standard across the code base. Elements of the code, including styling, formatting, design patterns, and naming conventions, should be kept consistent. Having someone who works with the same standards review your code will help keep it formatted correctly and easy to use for other team members.

Code review is also a great way to introduce other team members to the new piece of code going into the code base. You can talk about it and get them up to speed quickly.

Additionally, it helps to minimize or eliminate the “bus factor,” which Mike, the developer from Philadelphia who talks about code review in the video above, describes:

“The bus factor refers to the problem of having one team member with too much knowledge. The problem is if that team member then got hit by a bus, then no one on the team would know about the code that’s going into the code base.”

Lastly, a code review is a good idea because it facilitates discussion. When teams are busy or working remotely, communication doesn’t happen as frequently. Scheduling code reviews is a great way to get teammates talking, strategizing, and learning from one another.

Where do code reviews happen?

Depending on your relationship with the person asking you to review their code, this could happen in several locations. For example, a fellow learner or programmer friend of yours could simply email you a code file and ask for your comments. In that case, you would put your comments in the code file and send back any questions you have in an email response.

Alternatively, a code review can happen online with a community of programmers. You can help review someone else’s code on websites like:

• Codecademy Forums

If you take part in a code review on some of these repositories (like Stash or Github), it’s done with a pull request. The original programmer will add you as a reviewer, and then the website will track all changes that you make when you’re completing your code review. You could also be conducting a code review internally at work, either in person or using a version control system that your company has implemented.

5 easy steps to a successful code review

To help you get started with reviewing code, we’ve got a simple five-step process to share. Let’s get into code review best practices.

1. What is the code doing?

To start, we need to determine why the code was written in the first place. For example, if you’re conducting a code review at work, the purpose of the code could be tied to a change in requirements. It’s key to know the purpose of the code because that context will allow you to deliver the best possible code review with helpful comments.

To make sure that you have a good understanding of what the code is for, here are three questions you can ask yourself (or your fellow programmer):

• Do you have the right background info?
• Do you fully understand why this code is needed?
• Do you understand how this code fits into the project?

2. Frame your mindset

Before you get started reviewing the code, you want to get into the right mindset. In a sense, you want to know how you fit into this scenario. What is your level of familiarity with the code? How confident are you in knowing the person who’s written the code and what they are trying to accomplish? This will give you an idea of what feedback you can confidently give to this author.

This step might sound a little vague, so we’ve got a list of questions to help you set up your mindset for the code review:

• How experienced are you with the codebase or language?
• Are you going to be using this code in the future?
• Have you written code similar to this?
• What is the experience level of the author?
• What is your relationship with the author?

3. Test the code

Now that we know what the code is for, we can go ahead and test it out. We’re looking to see if the code does what it’s supposed to do. During this step, you can also test out the user interface. For example, if you’re reviewing a website, you could check to make sure that it appears as it should, that the changes are incorporated, and that nothing breaks as you use it.

If you need a couple of questions to help you provide feedback on code function, you can start here:

• Does the code generate warnings or errors?
• Does the code take longer than normal to build or run?
• Do the changes require any additional setup steps?

4. Inspect the code

After figuring out if the code actually works, we can dive into the code itself and make sure it’s written well. Here, we’re getting into the details of code review best practices. You can offer up advice on how things might be better organized or formatted. For example, you could ask yourself:

• Are correct naming conventions followed?
• Does the code follow DRY principles (i.e., it doesn’t repeat itself)?
• Are new files and folders named appropriately?
• Does the code have error handling?
• Is the code written in a style that’s similar to any other code within the same project?

5. Compile your review

Just as the code review can take place in several locations, you can also format your code review in a variety of ways. Sometimes you might need to prepare a formal report of your findings and then submit that as a Word document or PDF.

In other situations, if you are using a website like GitHub, you may just add comments to the code. If you have longer questions or feedback, you can add them to a comment thread and allow the conversation to take place all online.

Keep in mind a few tips when you are compiling your code review:

• Beware of nitpicking
• Be respectful
• Be specific and descriptive
• Be open to follow-ups

Growing as a developer through code review

One of the great things about becoming a developer or learning some aspects of programming for yourself is that you get to learn and work with other people. Code reviews are a common practice, and the discussion they generate will help make you a better programmer, whether it’s your code being reviewed or someone else’s code.

“Coding is a team sport,” says Mike. Learning to code should be fun, and learning how to give great code reviews is part of the process. If you’re thinking of becoming a front-end engineer or a back-end engineer , code reviews are a great way to practice for your new job.

To learn more of find other learners to practice with, head over to the Codecademy Forums .

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A complete guide to code reviews

Code reviews are a widely accepted best practice for software development teams. In this post, we'll cover why the most successful teams use code reviews, how to adopt them in your development process, and what the best practices are.

The goals of code reviews are:

• Sharing knowledge: The depth of know-how shared depends on the thoroughness of the review, but some amount of information will always be transferred. The knowledge can be general tips about the framework or programming language or invaluable domain-specific information bits.
• Spreading ownership: Code reviews have a positive impact on mutual code ownership. It's easy to end up in a situation where one developer always deals with a certain part of the codebase because they're most familiar with it. It might be a short-term win but is often a long-term loss. When ownership is shared, teams become more motivated and autonomous.
• Unifying development practices: Every developer has their own tendencies and ways to implement software. Code reviews help to narrow the gap between individual development styles and make the codebase more unified. Unification happens through high-level discussions about architecture and software design and via micro-level continuous integration checks, such as coding style enforcement.
• Quality control: Studies have shown that code reviews can help with catching defects, but even more importantly, they surface software design issues while they are still relatively easy to change.

Adopting code reviews

It's crucial to set the review process right. At worst, code reviews might feel like a hindrance. At best, code reviews help to sustain a good, stable team performance for many years.

If your organization is new to code reviews, introducing them will be a big change in the development process. Whenever implementing changes to ways of working, it's a good idea to ensure that everyone agrees on the process and has had the chance to contribute to the decision. This will cause less friction.

You, as a team or an organization, should agree on the philosophy and motivation behind code reviews before implementing them. You can write down an internal "what's a good code review" document together or refer to existing guides. It's a practical way to make sure everyone is aware of the whys.

Social relationships can't be ignored when talking about peers giving feedback about each other’s work. There are no silver bullets. It's hard work that requires each individual's contribution. To have the best chance of success, make sure to thoroughly discuss and educate your team about communication practices.

Best practices for code reviews

Blog posts about review practices often mention smaller details about branch names, commit message lengths, etc. While those tips are valuable too, this post focuses on more general recommendations.

There are multiple perspectives to a code review process: the author's, the reviewer's, and the team's point of view. Each party has an equally important role in the process. Some best practices apply only to the author or the reviewer, but many of them are important for everyone in the team.

Let's go through what those practices are. We'll focus on GitHub and pull request (PR) oriented review processes, but many of the tips apply in general as well.

1. Decide on a process

Responsibility will bounce between the author and the reviewer(s). The more explicit the review process, the less likely the ball is dropped by any party.

For example, our internal PR guidelines look something like this:

• DRAFT You can open a PR in a draft state to show progress or request early feedback.
• The review is done by another team member.
• Usually, there's no need to request a review; Swarmia automatically notifies the team. A manual review request can be useful if you, for example, want to request a design review from a certain designer.
• It's polite to have the PR ready so that you're not about to rebase everything 5 times while the reviewer tries to keep up.
• Preferably, create new commits after the review.
• You can directly commit suggestions from the GitHub UI.
• APPROVED The author is responsible for merging their own PR.

Yours might look different, but as long as the team agrees on the process, all is good.

2. Focus on the right things

To maintain code review standards across developers, it's a good idea to have guidelines for what to focus on in code reviews. Here's what we recommend focusing on:

• Functionality : Does the code behave as the PR author likely intended? Does the code behave as users would expect?
• Software design : Is the code well-designed and fitted to the surrounding architecture?
• Complexity : Would another developer be able to easily understand and use the code?
• Tests : Does the PR have correct and well-designed automated tests?
• Naming : Are names for variables, functions, etc. descriptive?
• Comments : Are the comments clear and useful?
• Documentation : Did the author also update relevant documentation?

Developers shouldn't spend their time reviewing things that can be automatically checked. More on that in "Use continuous integration effectively" and "Delegate nit-picking to a computer" .

3. Discuss the high-level approach early

Before jumping into coding a complex feature, it's beneficial to discuss the high-level approach first. Usually, this is done when planning the feature.

It's not nice for anyone if a PR ends up in a complete rewrite because the approach wasn't discussed beforehand. Rewrites of pull requests do happen every once in a while, but it's a sign that you might want to talk more before the implementation.

Sometimes a proof-of-concept implementation is needed to ignite the discussion. An effective way to get started is to open a draft PR of the approach and make the architecture decision based on the gained information.

4. Optimize for the team

This idea is explained well in Google's Engineering Practices document:

We optimize for the speed at which a team of developers can produce a product together, as opposed to optimizing for the speed at which an individual developer can write code.

Speedy reviews increase team performance in multiple ways: iteration becomes faster, developers don't need to do time-costly context switches as often, etc. Make sure the team understands the implications of fast reviews and agrees on a suitable maximum time for responding to a PR. The key is to minimize the response lag between the author and the reviewer, even if the whole review process takes long. For example, it might be invaluable for the author to know that their PR will be reviewed, for example, tomorrow morning.

That said, developers shouldn't interrupt their focus to do reviews. Instead, they should prioritize them whenever there's a fitting gap—for example after lunch.

Review speed is definitely not solely the reviewer's responsibility—the author has an important role too. The easier it is to pick a pull request and review it, the faster the work flows. Our help article "Review Code Faster" covers how to leverage Swarmia to speed up reviews.

5. Default to action

Sometimes reviews can stall for various reasons. During those times, you should have a bias for action. One can approve a PR even if there's some input left for the author to consider.

If a tech decision lingers and work becomes blocked, deciding something relatively quickly is better than slowly concluding to an "ideal" decision. Reserve enough time for technical decisions, but move on before you reach analysis paralysis. Developers should be inclined to merge code instead of primarily focusing on poking holes in the implementation.

6. Keep pull requests small

Smaller batches are easier to design, test, review, and merge. There are studies [1] [2] about the optimal amount of changed lines, but it's not an exact science. Google's recommendations put it well:

There are no hard and fast rules about how large is “too large.” 100 lines is usually a reasonable size for a CL, and 1000 lines is usually too large, but it’s up to the judgment of your reviewer. The number of files that a change is spread across also affects its “size.” A 200-line change in one file might be okay, but spread across 50 files it would usually be too large.

It's almost always possible to split a large change into smaller chunks—for example, with a separate refactoring PR that sets the stage for a cleaner implementation. Practicing slicing also helps to detect minimal shippable increments of your product.

Feature gates or feature flags might be necessary to gain the ability to ship half-ready product features along with the existing ones. Learn more why small pull requests are better .

7. Foster a positive feedback culture

Effective communication, in general, is really hard. Giving feedback about a colleague's work is one of the most challenging forms of communication. Acknowledge this in code reviews.

Here's a list of suggestions to improve discussions in code reviews:

• Give feedback about the code, not about the author.
• Pick your battles.
• Accept that there are multiple correct solutions to a problem.
• You're in the same boat.
• PR authors are humans with feelings (except dependabot 🤖).
• Provide reasons, not feelings, to support your position.
• Use the "Yes, and..." technique to keep an innovative atmosphere. It can be an ungracious pattern to dismiss fresh and fragile ideas in a draft PR stage.
• Keep the feedback balanced with positive comments. It's always delightful to receive praise from the reviewer.

If the pull request discussion becomes heated, schedule a call to discuss the topic. It usually helps to relieve the tension.

8. Use continuous integration effectively

GitHub Actions and status checks are widely used for building a robust CI pipeline. However, no matter the tools, it's crucial to invest in setting up a CI solution to automate as many quality checks as possible.

Automated checks allow reviewers to focus on more important topics such as software design, architecture, and readability. Checks can include tests, test coverage, code style enforcements, commit message conventions, static analysis, and much more.

A variety of metrics produced by continuous integration can help the reviewer to quantify the quality of a PR. Test coverage and code complexity metrics might reveal interesting insights that otherwise would be hard to estimate. These metrics don't necessarily need to be hard pass or fail checks but rather additional data for the review process.

Instead of slowing down the review process to catch more bugs, try to improve the automated checks to enable fast movement.

9. Delegate nit-picking to a computer

Whenever a reviewer spends their time nit-picking on small details, consider if it could be an automated check. Automatic check will always be enforced, while the human process relies on the reviewers' memories and moods to reject an anti-pattern.

For example, our ESLint rules enforce a consistent usage of certain terminology across the product. This is far more effective than documentation that would list the correct spelling of each word.

Code formatting is an example of a controversial topic in which almost all solutions are correct. Spending time debating stylistic choices rarely provides much value to the product, as long as a set of rules are adopted. Consistent unpleasing styles (to some individuals) are better than a mixture of multiple styles.

Your team can also adopt pre-existing practices, for example, a TypeScript project could adopt Prettier defaults instead of re-inventing their own.

10. Communicate explicitly

When reviewing a piece of code, be explicit about the action you request from the author. Let's say a reviewer has commented, "This could be done in Postgres in favor of application code" on a line of code. Are they requesting a change, suggesting to refactor it later, or just making the author aware of other solutions? It's often hard to judge. GitHub provides tools to be more explicit: for example, "Request changes" in a review.

Tip for the PR author: dismissing a review resets the pull request state to indicate that the reviewer can review again. It's up to you, the PR author, to decide if it feels important enough to use the feature, but especially in remote teams, it might help to make the process even more explicit.

11. Use explicit review requests

Review requests in GitHub are a convenient way to let others know that your code is ready for review. While a review can be requested manually, we recommend setting up a CODEOWNERS file to automate requesting a review. The method is robust and doesn't rely on individual authors remembering to request reviews.

Reviews can also be requested from a team, via CODEOWNERS or manually, which distributes the responsibility among team members. Make sure reviews are done evenly by all developers instead of siloing reviews to a single person.

12. Review your own code

Before submitting a PR for a review, go through the changes yourself. This helps to catch accidentally included changes, typos, and other simple mistakes that potentially waste the reviewer's time.

13. Document as much as possible in code

When receiving a comment or suggestion, aim for documenting the discussion in code. If the reviewer is not sure what the validateUsers function does, elaborate on the functionality ideally by renaming the function or writing a comment in the code. This way, the next developer that reads the code will understand the functionality without reading the PR discussions.

In some cases, the author can copy-paste their PR discussion response as is to comment in the code.

14. Write clear PR descriptions

The reviewer forms a mental picture of a pull request from multiple information sources: feature planning, description in the issue tracker, PR description, commit messages, chat history, etc. The more coherent the picture is, the faster and higher quality the review is. Decide on the team’s preferred channels to communicate certain information.

At Swarmia, we use PR descriptions to fill the technical gaps that the Jira issue description didn't cover. The additional details often include information such as what setup is needed to test the PR, surprising implementation details, and anything that makes the reviewer's job smoother. There are also other ways to add information: code comments, commit messages, commenting on individual lines in a PR as the author, etc.

Demo in any visual form is a nice touch. The format can be a screenshot, a screen capture, terminal output pasted in a code block, or anything that captures the change well. GitHub supports both videos and GIFs in the PR descriptions.

In addition to a static demo video, it's a great practice to build preview versions of your application per PR branch. The ability to interactively test the application preview without setting up anything in a local development environment saves time and increases the likelihood of someone manually testing a pull request.

Remember that the fidelity of descriptions required depends on the context.

You, as a team, need to figure out the perfect balance between explaining nothing or everything.

GitHub also supports issue and pull request templates if you want to standardize parts of the descriptions.

15. Use the shared repository model

For most private repositories, we recommend starting with the Shared repository model :

In the shared repository model, collaborators are granted push access to a single shared repository and topic branches are created when changes need to be made.

This model makes many aspects of the review process in GitHub simpler than the forking model that is popular among open-source projects.

16. Keep discussions public

It's convenient to have a quick chat about a pull request in the office, but be mindful of colleagues working remotely. It's polite to add a summary of face-to-face discussion as a PR comment.

Pull request discussions are searchable and easily accessible by all developers. They act as a history log of discussion which might be incredibly valuable when debugging a production incident later on.

Wrapping up

That concludes our complete guide for code reviews—and you know what that means in a company blog: a quick sales pitch!

If you're interested in improving your code reviews beyond what GitHub can offer, take a look at our code insights . Swarmia’s pull request view enables convenient access to your open pull requests, Slack notifications help your teams review code faster, and working agreements help you follow the practices that you've agreed on together with your team.

Additional reading

• Google's Engineering Practices
• How to Make Good Code Reviews Better by Gergely Orosz
• How to Make Your Code Reviewer Fall in Love with You by Michael Lynch
• Code Review Guidelines for Humans by Philipp Hauer
• Reducing Pull Request Cycle Time with Swarmia

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Best practices for Reviewing Code

Best practices for reviewing code.

You can now consume the entire blog in an audio version. Give it a try.

What is code review.

Code review is a software quality assurance process in which software’s source code is analyzed manually by a team or by using an automated code review tool. The motive is purely, to find bugs , resolve errors , and for most times, improving code quality . Reviewing the codebase makes sure that every software or new feature developed within the company is of high quality. Code review is an essential process that every software company must follow, so we researched the best practices for reviewing code.

Did You Know?

On average developers spend over 17 hours per week dealing with maintenance issues like debugging and refactoring, and about a quarter of that time is spent fixing bad code. That’s nearly $300B in lost productivity every year. 

-According to a research conducted by Stripe in partnership with Harris Poll

Top 9 Practices for Reviewing Code

Let’s dive into the best practices for performing an effective code review . A code review process differs from team to team; it’s an approach that needs few changes according to the projects and members getting involved. We have listed below 9 points to keep in mind while analyzing your code.

1. Set goals and standards

Before implementing a code review process, it is imperative to decide on important metrics and define unambiguous goals. Goals include acceptable coding standards in the company. Having set standards makes sure that each software product developed in the company meets the company’s standards.

2. Communicate Goals and Expectations

Communication of goals and expectations is essential. Not conveying goals and expectations to everyone in the team can lead to ambiguity regarding the result. Knowing what is expected from a developer makes it easier for them to complete a task.

3. Define a Code Review Process

Now that the goals and expectations are set and communicated with everyone it is time to define a code review process. Having a defined code review process will help everyone stay on track and decrease the time spent on technical debt

4. Use a code review checklist

A good code review requires a well-defined checklist. This checklist can be used by the reviewer to make sure nothing is missed out.

Recommended Read: The Ultimate Code Review Checklist

5. Authors should annotate source code before the review

Annotation can be a useful tool throughout the software development cycle and also for the reviewer. It helps the code reviewer understand the code better and what each block of code does. We encourage developers to add annotations to their code but do not overdo it.

6. Review for no more than 60 minutes at a time

It is a well-known fact that a person’s efficiency can deplete if they try to work continuously for hours without taking a break. The same concept applies when trying to review code. It is not recommended to perform code reviews for more than 60 minutes. Research has stated that post the 60 minutes mark the reviewer’s efficiency can deplete can some of the defects that may go unnoticed.

7. Establish a process for fixing defects found

Fixing the defects post a code review process is an ultimate goal. Having a defined process to fix the defects will make sure that it is done in the most effective way and with the least technical debt.

8. Foster a positive code review culture

In many companies, code reviews are used to evaluate the developer’s performance. But code reviews should be used for more than that. It should be used to develop an environment of learning. Rather than just telling them their mistakes it should be seen that they learn how to solve them and make sure these are not repeated.

9. Automate to Save Time

Automated Code Review tools like Codegrip are great assets for every software company. Tools like these can help reduce code review times to a few seconds. They can scan the entire codebase in less than a minute and find defects and also provide solutions for them.

Reviewing code is only a matter of seconds with Codegrip. Detect all bugs and vulnerabilities with a click of a button.   Your browser does not support the video tag.

Best code review technique.

Every company has its own process of performing code review but we look into four of the best and most code review techniques. 

1. Instant Code Reviewing Technique

The most direct form of reviewing code is the Instant Code review technique. In this, the developer is writing code while the reviewer sits beside reading the code simultaneously and correcting it on the go. Also known as pair programming, this process is best suited for highly complex programs where two minds can solve the problem much quicker and efficiently.

While this process looks favorable for companies but in reality, the time and workforce needed by this technique make it unfavorable. Two or more people working on code together means fewer average lines per developer. Interruption for corrections also halts the flow of work for the author of the code and the learning curve for a developer hinders if constant support or solution is presented right away by a reviewer for a complex problem.

  2. Ad-hoc (synchronous) Code Reviewing Technique

Also known as the “Over the Shoulder” code-review process. It is the most commonly used process with around 75% of companies participating in ad-hoc reviews. In this type of synchronous method, the coder produces the code and then asks the reviewer to review the code. The reviewer joins the coder at the screen and reviews the code while discussing it, over the shoulder. It is implemented wisely because it is informal and spontaneous. The process is successful only if the reviewer is available at the time or it disrupts the coder’s speed.  

This method has a high probability of missing errors and glitches as most of the time, the reviewer lacks the knowledge of the goal of the task. Immediate review was missed to bring out better results as a team would have in their refinement sessions together with tasks discussed upfront.

The ad-hoc review usually results in only a developer knowing the goal of the project. The major problem of this process is forced context-switching. Imagine working on complex software yourself, and then being called by your junior member for an ad-hoc review. You would have to leave your station immediately to review the code of your co-worker. Having to leave your work suddenly can create exhaustion and frustration.

3. Meeting-Based Code Reviewing Technique

This is the least commonly used process with only 44% using it once a month. In meeting-based code review, coders complete their work, and a meeting is called. The whole tech team sits, commenting, and attempting to improve the code together. It is a temporary process as it is highly unlikely to perform constantly considering the amount of time, loss of workforce for the time, decreased efficiency, and inability to get the whole team together.

Meeting-based code reviews make sense only when the whole team is inexperienced with the code review process. It involves assembling the entire team in a room, sharing ideas, and solving problems a few times. This helps every team member to understand the process much more clearer. With just over half of the companies using this, this process is not adequate as a code quality assurance standard.

4. Tool-Based Code Reviewing Technique

This process is not done by a team together, at least not on the same screen. It is also called an asynchronous code review. In this, once the code gets finished, the coder makes it available for others to review. The reviewer will review the code on their screen commenting, or even amending the errors in the codes. Then notifying the coder who on her agenda will improve it. When there are no changes, the code is marked with no comments for improvements, and the software gets approved.  

Tool-based code review eliminates the major problem in the above two processes, direct dependencies. With both coders and reviewers working on their schedules, it also eliminates forced context switching. But just like any other method has its downsides, the tool-based technique has many review loops which take a lot of time just like meeting-based processes.

Discussing these processes, we realize that there’s a need for a method that can make the use of Tool Based Code Review and remove the indirect dependency to get faster results. The solution to this is Automated Code Review Tools.

60% of Developers are using automated tools; 49% are using them at least weekly.

Automated Code Review Tools are tools prepared by tech community experts and reviewers who love using tool-based techniques but need the quickness of the ad-hoc technique. We will refer to our tool, CodeGrip to explain how these tools work. CodeGrip connects directly to your repositories like GitHub or BitBucket and lets you import your repository. It analyses your code line by line, finding out error markers such as incorrect lines, duplicity , and security issues , and displaying it collectively for a project and separately for all files as well.

Here’s a video of how you can review your code using Codegrip

An automated code review eliminates the manual reviewer role in the process. CodeGrip also provides the developer with a suggestive engine that shows the suggestions to amend code line by line. Codegrip also shows the estimated time to correct the code, allowing the developers to schedule work accordingly. This process is faster, more efficient, and even highly feasible at any time of period.

Want to get accurate code review results? Sign up now and get instant code review reports for Free!

Code review has remained the trusted code quality practice for the past few years. It seems to continue for years to come. But issues like lack of time and manpower call for the rise in the use of Automated Code Review tools. They’re more powerful, easier to use, and in the case of Codegrip highly affordable too.

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Pranav mandhare

Well curated Content. The best practices are very apt for every software company. I loved that you also had an audio and video version of the blog.

Thank you. Stay updated new blogs are coming up every week.

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How to do a code review.

The pages in this section contain recommendations on the best way to do code reviews, based on long experience. All together they represent one complete document, broken up into many separate sections. You don’t have to read them all, but many people have found it very helpful to themselves and their team to read the entire set.

• The Standard of Code Review
• What to Look For In a Code Review
• Navigating a CL in Review
• Speed of Code Reviews
• How to Write Code Review Comments
• Handling Pushback in Code Reviews

See also the CL Author’s Guide , which gives detailed guidance to developers whose CLs are undergoing review.

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What is a Source Code Review? A Comprehensive Guide [2024]

• August 25, 2023
• Posted by: Rohit Parashar
• Category: cybersecurity

What is a source code review?

Source code review, often referred to as a code review, is a fundamental practice in software development that plays a crucial role in ensuring the quality, security, and maintainability of code. In this article, we will delve into the concept of source code review, its significance, the review process, best practices, and its impact on the overall software development lifecycle.

Introduction to Source Code Review

Source code review involves the assessment of code by peers or experienced developers to identify issues, improve quality, and ensure adherence to coding standards.

Why is source code review important?

Code review offers multiple benefits, including catching bugs early, enhancing code quality, and transferring knowledge among team members.

The Source Code Review Process

• Understanding the Goals Before a code review, it’s crucial to define the objectives, whether it’s identifying bugs or ensuring compliance with architectural patterns.
• Selecting Reviewers The choice of reviewers should be deliberate, considering their expertise in the codebase and relevant domain.
• Setting Up the Environment A conducive environment with appropriate tools must be set up to facilitate effective code examination.
• The Actual Review Reviewers meticulously analyze the code, focusing on aspects like functionality, readability, and adherence to best practices.
• Addressing Feedback Developers address the feedback received during the review, fostering collaboration and improvement.

Best Practices for Effective Code Reviews

• Start early and Often Commence code reviews early in the development cycle and perform them regularly to prevent issues from accumulating.
• eep Reviews Small Smaller chunks of code are easier to review, leading to more accurate and focused assessments.
• Foster a Positive Environment Maintain a positive tone during reviews, emphasizing constructive feedback and knowledge sharing.
• Combine Automated and Manual Review Automated tools can catch certain issues, but manual reviews add a human touch, detecting complex logical problems.

Impact of Source Code Reviews on Software Quality

• Bug Detection and Prevention Early bug identification through code reviews reduces the cost and effort required for fixing issues later in the development process.
• Knowledge Sharing and Learning Code reviews facilitate the exchange of ideas and techniques among team members, fostering continuous learning.
• Code Consistency and Standards Consistent coding practices are promoted through reviews, leading to a uniform and maintainable codebase.

Code Review Tools and Technologies

• Static Analysis Tools Static analysis tools automatically scan code for potential issues, aiding reviewers in their assessments.
• Version Control Integration Integrating code reviews with version control systems streamlines the process and maintains a historical record.

Measuring the Success of Code Reviews

• Quantitative Metrics
• Metrics like the number of defects found post-release help quantify the impact of code reviews on software quality.
• Qualitative Metrics
• Assessing the quality of discussions during code reviews provides insights into the effectiveness of the process.

Challenges Faced in Code Reviews

• Time Constraints Balancing the need for thorough reviews with project timelines can be a challenge.
• Balancing Different Opinions Reviewers might have varying viewpoints; managing these differences constructively is essential.
• What is the main purpose of a source code review? A: The primary goal of a source code review is to identify and rectify issues in the code, improve its quality, and ensure compliance with coding standards.
• How often should code reviews be conducted? A: Code reviews should be conducted regularly, preferably as a part of each development cycle, to catch issues early.
• Are automated tools sufficient for code reviews? While automated tools are helpful, manual code reviews provide a deeper analysis, especially for complex logical problems.
• How do code reviews contribute to knowledge sharing? A: Code reviews encourage team members to discuss techniques, solutions, and best practices, fostering a culture of continuous learning.
• What does the future hold for code reviews? A: The future of code reviews involves AI-assisted reviews and tighter integration with continuous integration pipelines, enhancing efficiency and accuracy.

Incorporating source code reviews into the software development workflow is an invaluable practice that enhances code quality, reduces defects, and promotes collaborative learning. By leveraging the best practices and tools discussed in this article, development teams can ensure that their codebase remains robust and reliable at Craw Cyber Security .

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If you’ve been struggling with poor app performance, you might want to consider outsourcing code review. Here’s what the code review process is all about.

Regular code reviews prove to be an important part of the software development process. While automated tests, peer reviews and quality assurance can catch mistakes, mistypes, architectural flaws and some other limitations - in many cases, only a fresh pair of eyes can assess whether the design, logic, and quality of the code are up to standard.

If your existing app is not performing as fast and seamlessly as it should, or you’ve been struggling to add any new features for some time now - it’s high time to think about outsourcing code review and consider implementing regular reviews in the future to avoid such issues (if you haven’t already).

Here’s why code reviews matter and how to do them properly, either in-house or with some help from an experienced software development company like us. First things first, however:

What is code review?

Like any other human creation, software is prone to mistakes. With code reviews, however, these mistakes can be kept to a minimum.

Essentially, code review is the process of assessing code and its quality to find areas for improvement or code smells, as well as to identify bugs, errors, and part of the code that might not be up to quality standards set by the organisation.

Usually, it’s the fellow programmers who check each other’s code for mistakes, but the code review process can also be performed by a specialised software development company, especially if you plan to hire one.

Why code review?

It might not seem like it at first, but regular code reviews are capable of streamlining and accelerating software development like no other. A while back, the Best Kept Secrets of Peer Code Review already revealed the following benefits:

• Improved code quality
• Fewer mistakes in the code
• Shorter development and test cycles
• Increased user satisfaction
• Reduced impact on technical support

Since then, however, there are a few other code review benefits that can be added to the list. In fact, having a fellow developer reviewing code is said to be the most effective way to find and eliminate problems while coding nowadays.

When done right, code reviews streamline development, save time, the amount of work needed from Quality Assurance teams, and often money in the long run. What’s also worth taking into account is that regular code reviews contribute to the sense of "ownership" for any piece of code that developers write, and serve as a great opportunity to learn for more junior members of the team

Given these benefits, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that code reviews are seen as a valuable part of the software development process by many product owners. The truth is that any team can benefit from code reviews, regardless of technology and development methodology in place. Let’s take a closer look at how to review code, then.

How does code review work?

As with any other important piece of the puzzle, code reviews should integrate with the existing software development process. If you plan to initiate code reviews in your organisation, you should start by deciding who would be involved in it in the first place.

There are different ways in which code reviews can be performed:

• Notifying all software developers in the team. Once a given piece of code is ready for review, it’s sent around to all available software developers. Whoever will have some time for it first, they are going to review the code. This approach certainly allows for more flexibility, but since there’s no specific person responsible for the code review, it might not be done in the end.
• Leveraging pair programming. This approach makes two developers working on the same code together and checking each other’s work. But, since both of them are kept close to the code, they might be subjective at times. Not to mention that pair programming also requires more resources (time & team members) than some other methods.
• Having specific senior developers/team leaders involved in the code review process. This “over-the-shoulder” method is one of the easiest ways to perform a code review. Once the piece of code is ready, developers should have a specific colleague assigned (the more senior, the better) to review their work. This can either be done remotely or in-person.

When doing code reviews “in-house”, it’s also important to decide on timelines, iterations, and requirements for submitting code for review. Once you get that covered, you should familiarise your development team with the code review process and make sure it gets implemented properly.

What to look for when performing a code review, then?

When doing a code review, there are different factors that should be taken into account:

• Requirements : Are all cases fully implemented?
• Purpose : Is there a reason for every change made by the developer?
• Logic : Are there any obvious logic errors in the code?
• Design : Is the code well-designed?
• Functionality :  Is the way the code behaves good for its users?
• Complexity : Could the code be made simpler?
• Tests : Are the automated tests sufficient for the code?
• Style : Does the new code conform to existing style guidelines?
• Documentation : Was the relevant documentation updated?
• Naming : Are the names for variables/classes/methods clear enough?
• Comments : Are the comments concise and useful?

The exact criteria might change, but the aim stays the same: no matter the code review process you have in place, it’s crucial to review every new line of code, aim to improve its quality and help developers to get better at coding in the long run. In case you need some more guidance, here’s a set of best practices in code reviews.

Code review - best practices

• Establish what to look for in code reviews. As already mentioned, there are at least a few important criteria to keep in mind when performing code reviews. Set your standards and make sure your code reviewers follow them every time.
• Test thoroughly before reviewing the code “manually”. Time is of the essence - don’t waste it on tasks that can be automated. Ideally, you’d perform the review after code passes the automated checks, and then deploy it. This approach will allow you to cut down on errors and save time in the code review process.
• Keep it short (relatively). Research shows that after spending 60 minutes on code reviews, performance and attention to detail are not as sharp. The best practice seems to be reviewing between 100 and 300 lines of code at once, and spending 30-60 minutes on it every single time.
• Give constructive feedback. This should go without saying, but being constructive rather than critical in your feedback is essential to keep the team morale high and continue to learn from mistakes made. Code reviews play an important role in software development, which is why it’s crucial to foster a positive experience around them.
• Have a process for drawing conclusions and fixing the code. Identifying bugs is one thing, but fixing them is a different story. It might seem obvious but many development teams don’t have the process in place for fixing the issues they discovered. Make sure it’s not the case with your team.

Code review as a service

With existing software, you also might want to check the quality of the code and efficiency of the chosen technology up till now. In such cases, getting a fresh pair of eyes and outsourcing code review is a common practice.

Code reviews performed by external specialists make it possible to assess the used technology and written code in terms of efficiency, scalability, usability, costs and further development. It comes in useful especially when you plan to grow your product or outsource its development to a different team.

There are a few other benefits that stem from outsourcing code review, though:

• Outsourcing code reviews to developers who actually specialise in them can bring your business much better results. Programming skills don’t always translate into reviewing skills, which is something to keep in mind.
• Outsourced code review presents an unbiased, third-party perspective. Rather than taking into account who exactly wrote the code, an external team of specialists focuses solely on the code and its quality.
• Outsourcing code review can help you avoid technical debt. Being proactive about code quality can save you a lot of money and time in the long run. Actually, research shows that technical debt and maintenance issues can consume even 42% of a developer’s time, which should be a good enough reason to outsource code reviews every now and then.

How do we perform code audits at Future Mind

At Future Mind, we have an experienced team of developers who create complex solutions for a range of industries , including retail and insurance applications that have to be compliant with the highest standards, scalable, and able to serve millions of users. Code reviews are an important part of the whole process - and we perform them for clients with existing products as well.

As a matter of fact, when reviewing an existing product and its code, we check the quality of the software, the architecture, and app efficiency to evaluate usability, scalability, and the potential for changes and further development. The results of our review are presented in a comprehensive audit report, along with improvement recommendations.

In a nutshell, Future Mind’s audit report includes the evaluation of:

• App architecture
• The correct use of chosen technology and libraries
• Review of the core source code fragments based on style, standards and best practices
• Code performance & efficiency
• The scalability of the source code
• The quality and reliability of the software development process
• The quality of the automated tests: their scope & coverage
• The clarity & readability of the code, and the easiness with which new team members can be onboarded
• Findings & recommendations

The whole code review process takes approximately 2 weeks and is performed by a senior developer.

Since code review is a fast method for checking the efficiency and quality of the existing source code, as well as evaluating its potential for growth - you might want to consider it when your app users report bugs and low performance, or you simply want to find out whether the app is being developed with the highest standards and best practices in mind.

In both cases, you can turn to software development specialists for a comprehensive code review. As usual, we’re here to help .

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How To Find Success With Code Reviews

Developers tend to like code reviews — when they’re done right. But getting code reviews right can be tricky, in large part because it’s such a human process.

Adrienne Braganza Tacke is a software engineer and author of “ Looks Good to Me: Actionable Advice for Constructive Code Review .” In this episode of The New Stack Makers, she spoke with me about how to ensure code review processes go smoothly.

“There’s a lot of human factors in it that could make it go wrong — and a lot of teams will just say, forget it, we’re just not going to do it,” Braganza Tacke said. “It doesn’t bring the team the value that it should be bringing, because of all these other negative things that could surround it.”

Three Challenges to Successful Code Review

To ensure success with code reviews , there are three challenges Braganza Tacke said teams need to address head-on.

The first is any potential ambiguity in the process. It’s important to have a clear process about what the code will achieve and any stylistic preferences before the code is written — and well before the code review  process . But it’s also important for both the submitter and the reviewer to be precise during the code review process.

“Being ambiguous leads to a lot of problems,” she said. “You go through so much more back and forth because you’re not aligned on the code or what it is.”

Ambiguity can lead not just to rework, but rework done incorrectly because the reviewer wasn’t clear on what needed to be fixed. That’s why it’s important, she said, to be as explicit as possible when performing code reviews.

The second potential pitfall is subjectivity, she said. Code reviewers will sometimes engage in subjective reviews about code preferences rather than focusing on objective reviews about whether the code did what it set out to do.

“Why are you stating something is wrong? Can you back it up? Is there a better way to do something? Certainly bring that up in the code review, but don’t say it just because you think it’s the better way — describe or justify why it is a better way to do something,” Braganza Tacke said.

“Coming from an objective background, rather than a subjective background, especially in the review process … will go so far in terms of keeping the team dynamics much better on your team and during code reviews.”

The third challenge is letting go of ego during code review. That can be difficult, because people tend to be attached to their code, but it’s important for both the submitter and reviewer to check their egos at the door.

“I have experienced it myself, where there’s somebody who thinks they’re the greatest developer ever, and they use the code review as a way to put other developers down,” she said. “Or every single review that they are asked to do, they use it as an opportunity to rewrite the code and say this is a better way to do it … instead of starting a conversation or really working with the team.”

Programmers: Be Your Own First Reviewer

Braganza Tacke learned early on that her own ego could be a barrier to better code. She worked at a company that did not have a formal code review process, but code was sent to quality assurance for review after completion. She admitted she had to do an ego check on herself and how she approached that process.

“I was the developer. They were the quality assurance person who is just testing something. If they found something wrong, maybe they were wrong,” she said. “That was a very big ego check for myself that, no, I did not write perfect code every single time. No, when they did find something, that doesn’t mean that it was something small or insignificant.”

She also had to learn that just because she finished the code, it didn’t mean that she had finished her work.  She began to realize that the first code review should be with herself.

“If you are able to do your own review, and you can do it as many times as you need to, that’s another chance for you to improve the actual code that you finally send up to the reviewer,” Braganza Tacke said. “Anything that we can do to make our code better and to do as many self-checks as possible before the code review will actually make the code review more productive because then the reviewer is not wasting time on those smaller stakes issues.”

Done right, code reviews can be a way to improve code, mentor new programmers and ensure the whole team is familiar with and vested in the code, she said.

“The knowledge transfer and the knowledge sharing that can happen in code reviews is really, really important, and that levels up the skill and the knowledge of the entire team,” she said.

Tune into this episode of Makers to learn more about how to succeed with code reviews.

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5 Best Practices For Code Review

Software Development Process refers to implementing the design and operations of software, this process takes place which ultimately delivers the best product. Do several questions arise after this process like whether the code is secure? Is it well-designed? Is the code free of error? As per the survey, on average programmers make a mistake once at every five lines of the code.  To rectify these bugs Code Review comes into the picture. Reviewing a code typically means checking whether the code passes the test cases, has bugs, repeated lines, and various possible errors which could reduce the efficiency and quality of the software. Reviews can be good and bad as well. Good ones lead to more usage, growth, and popularity of the software whereas bad ones degrade the quality of software. 

In this blog, we will discuss the 5 steps to a complete review code. So let’s get started.

1. Split the Code into Sections

For web development, several files and folders are incorporated. All the files contain thousands of lines of code. When you start reviewing them, this might look dense and confusing. So, the first step of code review must be splitting the code into sections. This will make a clear understanding of the code flow.

Suppose, there are 9 folders and each folder contains 5 files. Divide them into sections. Set a goal to review at least 5 files of the first folder in n no of days and once you complete reviewing it, go for the next folder. Like this, when you assign yourself a task for some time, you’ll get sufficient time to review, and thus, you’ll not feel bored or disinterested. 

2. Ask Fellow Developers to Review

This is the second step of the code review process . You must seek advice or help from fellow developers as everyone’s contribution is equally important. Experienced ones can identify the mistakes within a second and rectify them but the young minds come up with more simple ways to implement a task. So, ask your juniors as they have the curiosity to learn more. To make it perfect, they find other ways which will benefit in two ways – 

a) They’ll get deeper knowledge.

b) Solution can be more precise.  

The below quote states the best outcome of teamwork. Thus, teamwork improves the performance of software and fosters a positive environment.

“Alone, we can do so little. Together, we can do so much”                                                            – Helen Keller

3. Basic Principles : Naming Conventions, Usage of libraries, Responsiveness

There are some principles and standards to follow while writing code. There has to be followed to enhance the effectiveness and productivity. Make a note of those principles and check one-by-one whether they’re followed or not. The below ones describes some of the standards every developer should follow. You can also check for more.

Naming Conventions: Use standard names for variables to assign values. The name should be meaningful, pronounceable, sound positive. Before naming, always keep in mind that whenever anyone reads it, it should be understandable. 

Usage of Libraries: A library is a generalized file of code that acts as a resource used by programs often under software development . To avoid lines of code, we use the library, we import (call and use) several methods from libraries and use them in our code to reduce complexity.  

Responsiveness: It creates dynamic changes on the website. Do check for the responsiveness of the website as to whether it works on all devices like mobile phones, tablets, laptops, etc. This also helps websites get higher search engine results .

4. Check For the Reusability of Code

Functions are reusable blocks of code. A piece of code that does a single task that can be called whenever required. Avoid repetition of codes. Check if you’ve to repeat code for different tasks, again and again, so there you can use these functions to reduce the repeatability of code. This process of using functions maintains the codebase. 

For example, if you’re building a website. Several components are made in which basic functionalities are defined. If a block of code is being repeated so many times, copy that block of code or function to a file that can be invoked (reused) wherever and whenever required. This also reduces the complexity level and lengthiness of the codebase . 

5. Check Test Cases and Re-Build

This is the final step of the code review process . When you have rectified all the possible errors while reviewing, check if all the test cases are passed, all the conditions are satisfied. There are various tests such as functionality, usability, interface, performance, and security testing.

• Functionality: These tests include working of external and internal links, APIs, test forms.
• Usability: Checking design, menus, buttons, or links to different pages should be easily visible and consistent on all web pages.
• Interface: It shows how interactive the website is.
• Performance: It shows the load time of a website, tests if there’s a crash in a website due to peak load.
• Security: Test unauthorized access to the website.

Once all the test cases are passed, re-build the entire code. After this process is done, go for a look over the website. Examine all the working like buttons, arrow keys, etc. 

Go For a Demo Presentation

When all the steps of the Code Review process stated above are done, go for a demo presentation. Schedule a flexible meeting and give a presentation to the team demonstrating the working of the software. Go through the operations of every part of a website. Tell them about the changes made. Validate your points as to why these changes have been done. See if all requirements are fulfilled and also the website doesn’t look too bulky. Make sure it is simple and at the complete working stage.

Things to avoid while reviewing code

• Don’t take too many files at a time to review.
• Don’t go for continuous reviewing, take breaks.
• So many nested loops.
• Usage of too many variables.
• No negative comments to anyone in a team.
• Don’t make the website look too complex.

So till now you must have got the complete picture of the Code Review process . It is a very tedious process in any modern development team’s workflow. It helps in giving a fresh start to identify bugs and simple coding errors before your product gets to the next step or deployment, making the process for getting the software to the customer more efficient. Before getting your prototype turned into a product, do a proper code review or scrutiny to get the best version of it. 

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'Let's get it right, not get it fast': Planning board to review draft zoning code in Dec.

A completed draft of Palm Beach’s revamped zoning code will be delivered to town staff by the end of September, but residents will have to wait until the Planning and Zoning Commission's meeting in December to get their first look. 

Consultant Sean Suder of ZoneCo. gave details of the timeline to commissioners during Tuesday's meeting and said the two-month gap would allow town staff time to review the draft before it is added to the commission's agenda. 

He warned commissioners that they should prepare for what is likely to be an extended review process.

“We should expect an intermittent process, where there’ll be lots of agreement and disagreement over quite some time, is my guess. So, let’s get it right, not get it fast,” he said. 

Commissioner William Gilbane asked town staff and Suder to create a schedule for the draft-review process that can be presented during the commission's Oct. 1 meeting.

“Folks are coming back for the season, and they are going to want to know when (the commission's) meetings are going to be discussing hot topics,” Gilbane said. “And I think we owe the citizenry a schedule.” 

It was Suder’s first update since May, when commissioners and ZoneCo. agreed to delay the review process until after the draft is finished because of repeated standstills over issues with the consultant’s recommendations. 

During the five meetings to discuss the zoning code, spanning from November to April, ZoneCo. presented studies of the town’s low-density residential zoning district, the Midtown commercial district zoning and the island’s condominium-laden South End, alongside zoning recommendations for all three districts. 

Nearly all of Suder’s recommendations were met with concern, especially regarding the town’s low-density residential districts. Commissioners criticized the draft’s subcategories based on street width, the limitations placed on a house's location on a lot and the required distance between a home and its street. 

In May, Town Planner Jennifer Hofmeister-Drew recommended taking an approach like the draft Comprehensive Plan review: Having the document written in full before initiating a line-by-line review comparison of the current zoning code and the draft. 

The commission agreed and postponed its review of the zoning code until its September meeting.

The Sept. 3 status update fell short for Chair Gail Coniglio, who expected an update with at least some mention of the draft’s zoning recommendations.

“Do you have any kind of verbal contribution at this point? Because I really thought we were going to have something that we can start with as a review,” she said. 

Suder said that he chose not to give a "piecemeal" update to avoid questions that could be answered by examining the entire draft. 

Commissioner calls for town to dedicate day to outgoing member Richard "Dick" Kleid

Tuesday also was the last meeting for term-limited Commissioner Richard Kleid.  

A longstanding member of the Palm Beach community , the retired attorney got his start in town matters as a member and chairman of the zoning commission from 1998 until 2005, when he was elected to the council. 

Kleid served two terms as president pro tempore and one as the council president before stepping down in 2018. A few months later, the Town Council appointed him to the zoning commission, where he has served as a member, vice chair and chair.  

Kleid’s dedication to Palm Beach was not lost on Commissioner Michael Vincent John Spaziani. 

“I would like to suggest to (the town) council, that we set aside one day for Dick Kleid, in memory of his 25 years of experience and his dedication to all of us. So, thank you, Dick, you have been incredible,” Spaziani said, as his colleagues erupted into applause. 

Kleid thanked his colleagues for their commitment to the board. 

“It’s been a great privilege to serve on this commission with all of you,” Kleid said. “Each one of you do your homework, make insightful comments that move the agenda, and so I feel really confident that I’m leaving the commission in good shape.” 

Conigliot, as well as Alternate Commissioners Nicki McDonald and Dragana Connaughton, are all up for reappointment to their respective seats. The application period ended Aug. 30, and the Town Council is expected to make appointments to the commission during its Sept. 10 meeting.

Diego Diaz Lasa is a journalist at the  Palm Beach Daily News , part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at  [email protected] .