Code Review Process: How To Do An Effective Code Review in 2023?

Code review is one of the pivotal elements in the software development life cycle because it enables the developers to examine the quality of source code. Think of the code review process as the case when the writer drafts the story and the editor reviews it for any changes to make it crispier and more engaging.   

In this article, we will dive deeper to make you understand what exactly code review is, why it is important, and how to make your software impactful through it.  

What is a Code Review?  

Code review is the process where fellow developers or Tech lead evaluates the code to confirm that it follows the software engineering process and best practices laid down by Industry or Company Experts. Developers analyze whether the code follows specific code formatting guidelines and whether the code meets functional or non-functional requirements or not. 

When doing a code review, the prime motto of developers is to check whether the code is consistent, meets specific coding standards, or is suitable for the next development phase. 

Code review is a peer code review, where fellow developers or programmers review each other’s codes. Thus, streamlining software development.

As developers create software or applications, errors are likely to occur due to oversight or a lack of experience in that technology stack, or a missing boundary condition or scenario while attempting to solve a complex problem through coding. In that case, peer-to-peer code reviews outperform best.  

Code reviews are useful for identifying functional like Missed scenarios, Missed use cases, and Non-functional flaws like memory leaks, buffer overflow, and runtime exceptions in source code. 

Hence, developers conduct a code review process to ensure that the software or application developed should be of high quality.

Let’s throw light on statistics –  

According to the 2019 State of code review, “around 53 percent of software developers get their codes reviewed daily. Software development teams believe that frequent code reviews can improve code quality.   

According to Smart Bear, conducting the code review process increases developer satisfaction by 3.5 times.   

Don’t consider the code review process as one-sided feedback. You might have heard this phrase- Don’t let the bugs and coding errors spoil your project. So, why not perform a code review?  

There are 2 Types of Code Review –

  Here are the 2 types of Code Review-

1. Functional code review   

In functional code review, the developers review the quality of source code by checking whether the syntax of the code is good or not and whether the code follows basic code formatting practices.   

Functional code reviews are related to the functionality of the software or an application, so if the developer overlooks these code issues, then it might affect the application.   

2. Non-Functional Code Review   

While reviewing the code, the developers analyze the non-functional requirements, such as determining whether the code is secure, scalable, reusable, and easy to maintain.

Therefore, the developer strives to ensure that the code is secure, easy to maintain, offers robust performance, and adheres to the best practices laid down in Software Engineering.

Process of Code Review   

Many organizations neglect the importance of doing code reviews, which could lead to potential effects in the future. For Instance – Meetings are taking more time than what was expected.     

If your organization does not have specific coding guidelines, it’s high time for you to initiate the code review process.   

1. Setting Early Expectations   

The first step involved in code review is when a developer adds comments about the source code. Here, developers review their codes through the authors before submitting them to the entire team for review.        

2. Set the Quantifiable Goals   

If you want to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of code, then you should set quantifiable targets. Having defined goals helps the developers to become individually accountable.   

For example – If you are setting a goal to fix more bugs, it would be generic. Instead, there should be a number attached to it. In that case, the code review process becomes less time-consuming for the reviewer.   

3. Set the Time Limit to Review the Code of Not More Than 60 Seconds   

Research studies show that shorter & more frequent code review increases the quality of work. It means when frequent reviews are conducted regularly; then developers need not worry about spending a major chunk of time on getting their code reviewed.   

4. Conduct Peer-Review Documents   

Here, the entire development team does the peer-to-peer code review on development, such as analyzing the requirements, design documents, and user stories to ensure that the entire development team is working towards the end goals of the project  

5. Take 20 Minutes Break in Between Reviewing the Code   

If you want to improve the quality of the code, you should review the code with fresh eyes. The developer can conduct in-between review sessions where 300-500 lines of code are reviewed per hour by taking a short break of 20 minutes each. 

Ideally speaking in Bigoh, we try to do code review in the first half of the day as it’s always better to eat the frog in the first half rather than rushing this at the end of the day. Book our code review service. 

6. Do a Certain Amount of Code Reviews Everyday   

When developers know that their code will be reviewed daily, they will become watchdogs by doing a regular code review so that there will not be any delay in the development phase or processes.   

7. Use a Code Review Tool   

The development team can use various code review tools to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of code. Code review tools can be integrated into development workflows, helping the developers work together and thereby maintain the quality of code.   

There are various code review tools that increase the productivity of developers through automated code review. Some of these tools include Github, sonarqube, GitLab, etc.  

For Instance – Github has its inbuilt code review tool which allows the programmers to submit the pull request for getting code reviewed.  

Another code review tool is Sonarqube makes the code clean by detecting issues in the code and accelerates the development of the project.  

8. Use the Code Review Checklist   

Creating a code review checklist is a structured approach that helps the reviewer and author check what things are missing in the code. The code review checklist enables developers to perform quality checks and approve the code on the codebase.

Here are some things that are there in the code review checklist –  

• Verification of feature requirements   
• Whether the code is well formatted or not 
• Whether the code is readable or not   
• Define coding style guide   
• Check for code duplication  
• Whether the code requires extra documentation or not   

Wrapping Up   

If you want to build a high-performing application, then consider doing a code review. By reviewing your code, you are not only saving the precious dollars of your clients but at the same time, making your employees happy.   

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