The Seven Deadly Sins of Software Reviews

Software peer reviews are a powerful quality practice, but many teams struggle with them. Here are 7 common problems and some solutions.

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Technical peer reviews are a powerful software quality practice. In a review, a group of people examine a work product for defects and improvement opportunities. I’ve been a big fan of peer reviews since about 1988 and would never work in an organization that didn’t practice them routinely.

Any type of software work product can benefit from review: requirements, designs, code, tests, plans, documentation, process descriptions. Yet teams often have difficulty getting a review process going. In this article I describe the symptoms of seven common review problems and some solutions.

Sin #1: Participants Don’t Understand the Review Process

Symptoms: Software developers don’t instinctively know how to conduct and contribute to software reviews. Review participants may have different understandings of their roles and responsibilities, and of the review steps. Team members may not know which items should be reviewed, when to review them, or what review approach to use