World-class engineers loves to balance speed and quality in the software development process.
The obsession for speed and scale should be supported by developer infrastructure and tools in order to write, build, test and release code in any programming languages.
Engineers are accountable to keep “lights-on” for the software at an ever increasing scale.
One of the process followed by many software engineering teams is code review that could be depicted with a simple process as following
Code review process can apply breaks on the speed element in the software development process, so although it has advantages — it is one area where multiple discussions continue to happen.
Few benefits of code review process
- find potential defects before it reaches the quality engineer
- improve readability of the code — this one is close to my heart
- increases collective ownership of the team
- develop engineers to think alternative approaches to a solution
However its not all rosy
- increase in workloads for both author and reviewer
- workplace environments can become stressful if negative interpersonal interactions occur
- any type of review is biased, irrespective of the field in which it is applied
Few practices that has helped
- Enable a working culture, where quantified benefits from the industry (or within the company) are showcased time and again
- Monitor the workloads and distribute the review task fairly
- Avoid criticism of the author, instead provide constructive and actionable feedback. See respectful reviews.
- Use tools instead of manual process, especially the ones that allow anonymous code review
Code review is tried and tested with enormous amount of benefits, however if not implemented and guarded well, it can create interpersonal challenges and toxic work environments
References
- How to say “Actually, I am not OK”
- Code health: Respectful Reviews == Useful Reviews
- Gender differences in accepting and receiving requests for tasks with low promotability
Note: This post was written in Mar 2022, and now moved to my personal site.
Titto Thommy 
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