Culture of Review
I am writing this memo to share with you something that I call the "Culture of Review"
We have spent a lot of time analyzing the efficiency of our team and also how to improve the quality of the work done. Whilst we will discuss the efficiency part later, I want to focus on the quality part here.
Many a times, we have gathered requirements, analyzed and developed systems, tested it and delivered it to the customer. However, a few areas where we fall short is
(a) Requirements were misunderstood
(b) Coding Guidelines were not followed
(c) Only one person has knowledge of a part of the system.
We need to address these problems. One way the industry addresses this is through "Whitebox testing". In my opinion, a "Review" is more effective than whitebox testing.
Reviews address the fundamental problems we have today on the quality side. When you have an extra pair of eyes reviewing your code/package, it is difficult to slip in things unnoticed (BTW - Ethical behaviour is what you are doing when NO ONE is watching you!)
The guidelines being followed can be done with an aid of tools + manual reviews as no tool can do a perfect job on doing style and guidelines check.
They also build knowledge in more than 1 person and bring a different perspective to the system, often times for the better.
Regards,
Tarun
Agree 100 %
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