Software development is a mathematical process that involves a large team of experts with different backgrounds. No matter how experienced they are, custom software developers will make mistakes.
In order to stay ahead of any potential issues with quality, experienced software engineers conduct a systematic review to identify inconsistencies that can cause bigger problems if not addressed. The code review process is a crucial part of the custom software development lifecycle and a key principle in Agile software development.
This article will explain the importance of code review in bespoke software development and discuss some best practices to make this process work within the Agile context.
What is Code Review?
A code review is simply a systematic analysis of the software source code. This process aims to find bugs and provide a precise estimate of code quality.
In general, code review is used to:
- Improving Practices: Creating more efficient methods to complete daily tasks
- Error detection: Find logical errors, bottlenecks and other problems.
- Vulnerability exposure: Isolating common vulnerabilities.
- Detecting malware: Identify suspicious code, backdoors or malware embedded in the software.
These stages of code review are especially helpful for distributed software development teams. Agile and remote teams usually work without supervision, sharing tasks according to their skill sets. Code reviews allow tasks to be combined without confusion or overlap.
Why does code review matter?
Code Review is the peer review process that takes place before formal testing. It can be useful in many different ways, including finding bugs early on. Code Review improves collaboration, and it helps dedicated development teams to work together in order to deliver high-quality product codes. It is a way to add a layer of quality assurance checks before actual Unit Testing.
Why is code review important?
We're all capable. We can certainly ship code without someone standing metaphorically over our shoulders, watching every move we make.
Theoretically, yes. In practice, a code review process is helpful for many reasons. Here are a few.
- Limits risks
It is the most important of all. It's always a good idea to have someone else double-check our work. This reduces the chance of making an unnoticed mistake. Even good developers get tunnel vision sometimes.
Always remember not to forget anything. In the front-end, topics such as keyboard navigation, accessibility for screen readers, flexibility in internationalization, and friendly non-JavaScript behaviors are often overlooked.
- Improves code quality
This isn't about code linting and standards (at least, not exclusively). It's all about making code more efficient.
It's always a great idea to ask for improvements in a team where everyone has their own strengths and backgrounds. Someone might suggest a better solution, a more appropriate pattern of design, or a way to reduce the complexity and/or improve performance.
- Everyone is better off
Joining dedicated teams allows everyone to learn and improve. Code submitters are likely to get feedback on their work - letting them know about possible issues and areas of improvement. By reading the code, reviewers may learn something new and find solutions that they can apply to their work.
- It is helpful to be familiar with
It's unlikely that all software experts will work on the same part of an application when a team is working together on a project. A custom software development solutions expert may focus on a large part of the application for a long time while another is working on something completely different.
Code reviews help people become familiar with code that they may not have written but will be required to maintain in the future. It increases the knowledge of codebases across the team and can speed up future custom software development process.
Benefits of Custom Software Code Review
- Consistency in design and implementation
Every developer has a unique programming style. It is obvious that multiple developers will be involved in large custom software development projects. When developers use their own coding style during development, they hinder collaboration and slow down overall progress.
The code review process forces custom software development services providers
to adhere to certain coding standards throughout the sprint phase. This standardizes source code so that all developers can easily study and understand it.
In the long term, code review will be useful as project members are likely to change. Maintaining a consistent pattern of coding will allow future developers to spend less time analyzing existing code and more time developing new features.
- Optimizing code for better performance
Code review can help junior developers to identify areas for improvement in code optimization. They lack the experience to know how to optimize code. Code review helps junior developers get the feedback they need from senior developers and helps them improve their coding skills. It also helps to identify errors or critical mistakes that could lead to serious bugs.
Even the most experienced software application programmers are prone to make mistakes due to the monotonous nature of programming. By inviting fresh eyes to look at each unit of code, code review can help eliminate mistakes. The reviewer checks for errors and fixes them if necessary.
- Share and collaborate on new techniques
Code review is not only a time-saver but also a human-centric investment. Most programmers spend their time coding in isolation. However, practices like code review enforces software system developer collaborations. It encourages developers to exchange ideas and interact with their code. It also encourages developers to build mutual trust.
Team members can also share information about new knowledge during code reviews. It helps the team to upgrade their skills as they gain knowledge of the range of technologies.
- Monitoring project quality requirements
Each project has clearly defined software requirements and scope. A complex tailor-made software project is developed by several developers. Each developer creates features that are unique according to the business requirements. There's always the possibility that a developer will misinterpret the project requirement and end up creating a useless feature.
- Enhancing the maintainability of code
Code Review improves maintainability. Code review ensures multiple people have a good understanding of the logic and functionality of the code, making it easier to maintain if the original code author is not available.
How to Do It Right?
It is important and extremely helpful to have a code review process. Each custom software development team that produces code should do some form of code review.
It is true that doing useful and meaningful code reviews may not be as simple as you might think. It won't bite you, even if done badly. You'll feel as if you wasted your time, and it won't help.
We had a recent retrospective at my work about our code-reviewing process. We realized that only 3 of the 12 developers participated in code reviews.
One of our Scrum Masters conducted a retrospective in order to identify areas for improvement and ways we could make them.
- Planning ahead
Most people who don't participate in custom software solutions code reviews say that they can't take the time.
I have to admit that I do not understand this argument. I imagine it this way: If a coworker asks me for help, I will not say, "Don't Have Time, Not Interested." I will find the time to assist. Not right away, but in an hour. I'll make time. Why? Because
- This is what it means to be a part of a group
- If they ask for my opinion, they are interested in it. It makes sense to share it with them.
"Why don't you participate in the code review process?"
"I don't have the time."
A pull request to me is the same as a colleague asking for assistance. It's fine to say you don't want to help from time to time. But by refusing to do so consistently, you are actively pulling yourself away from the team. This is not friendly or positive behavior. Help others.
We started to take into consideration that developers will spend some time each day (maybe 30 minutes or so) reviewing code. It's no longer a surprise if we spend 30 minutes on a big code review.
We also attempted to reduce dramatically the amount of code that constitutes a pull request. We used to get massive pull requests - thousands of changes in dozens of files.
We don't do this anymore. We make smaller pull requests to make it easier to review them, get more feedback, and encourage developers to participate in the process. "Ship often and small."
- Context
We found that the second most common problem was that we did not have a good understanding of context. This is important if you want to give useful feedback. We would only do a simple syntax check when we didn't have the context. This is useful but not sufficient. You become what is called a "human Linter."
The solution is fairly simple. Add a description of the pull request that explains what the goal is and how to achieve it. You don't need to write a lot of text; just a few sentences will do. A link to the story or issue is also helpful.
- Asking
We also pointed out that sometimes we didn't even realize something needed to be reviewed. We're inundated with emails and notifications each day, so many that it's hard to keep up. After all, we're just human.
Again, this is a simple solution: ask someone to give you a review. You can do this in many different ways, such as by honking your horn at the office or pinging someone via Slack. Each team has its own way.
When we submit a pull request, we always ping a specific group. The members of the group will be notified and can tackle it whenever they have time. We can also ping the developer directly if it is more specific. This also works.
Pinged people will be able to review the code and can leave comments. Even if there is nothing to report, we try to leave comments to let people know that the code has been ready for merging.
You can implement a "reply to everything or fix it" policy because some pull requests were blindly combined without any consideration of the comments. You either fix the feedback or explain why you did not. You never leave a comment unresolved, and you don't merge your Pull Request with comments that haven't been resolved.
Final Thoughts
Code review is an important stage in software product development. Originally designed for Waterfall, it has evolved to reflect changing best practices. Peer reviews are a defining agile principle today used by many custom software development company, as they play a crucial role in creating consistency and QA testing, and smooth integration.
By minimizing mistakes, programmers can deliver high-value custom solutions on time and without errors to clients.
