Agile Code Reviews

Tom Mochal, PgMP, PMP, TSPM is the president of TenStep, Inc., a methodology development, consulting and training company. Tom won the Distinguished Contribution Award from the Project Management Institute for his work spreading knowledge of project management around the world. He is a speaker, lecturer, instructor and consultant to companies and organizations around the world.

  Agile   ProjectsAtWork  

Code reviews are not typically viewed as part of a pure Agile process, but some of the technique's benefits, such as collective ownership, are in line with the Agile philosophy, and they can be conducted without slowing your project down. Here are some suggestions for adapting code reviews to work in an agile environment.

Programming is typically a solitary affair. Even though there may be dozens of people working on the code, each person typically works by himself to perform the initial construction and unit testing. In fact, most people prefer it that way. They enjoy the challenge of developing code to perform a business function and they like the feeling of accomplishment that comes with getting the code completed and successfully unit tested.

A good technique to ensure initial code quality is to have a code review. This allows another person or a small group to walk through the code and provide additional feedback about the structure and quality of the code. Because the program was probably written and unit-tested independently, this is the first opportunity for others to see the work. 

(Of course, the code review step is not needed if your team is utilizing the pair programming technique. In pair programming, the code is reviewed and critiqued by a second person while it is being developed. This is the topic for a future column.)

Is it Agile?

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