Why code reviews matter
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 upstre...