3 Building your team’s first code review process

 

This chapter covers

  • A step-by-step process on how to build your team’s first code review
  • Establishing goals and expectations
  • Choosing a workflow and tools/platform
  • Setting guidelines
  • How to make changes to your code review process

If you’re brand new to code reviews and don’t currently have a process in place, this chapter is for you! Using three phases, you’ll build your first code review process together with your team. First, you’ll establish your team’s code review goals. Next, you’ll decide on the tools or platform you’ll use and the basic workflow your team will follow. Then (in my opinion, one of the most important phases), you’ll set some guidelines around your review. After spending some time trying out your process, you can use the fourth phase to learn how to make changes to and refine your code review. Get ready for a lot of conversations and open discussions with your colleagues!

3.1 Establish your goals

3.1.1 Finding bugs

3.1.2 Codebase stability and maintainability

3.1.3 Knowledge transfer and knowledge sharing

3.1.4 Mentoring

3.1.5 Recordkeeping/chronicling

3.1.6 Choosing your code review goals

3.2 Choose your tools

3.2.1 Assessing code review functions

3.2.2 Choosing a tool

3.3 Set guidelines

3.3.1 What is our workflow?

3.3.2 What is your review focus?

3.3.3 What can block a PR from being approved?

3.3.4 What’s our approval policy?

3.4 Refining the process

3.4.1 Refinement scenario walkthroughs

Summary

References