How do you review software designs effectively?

1 Why review software designs?

Reviewing software designs is not only a good practice for ensuring correctness and completeness, but also a valuable opportunity for learning, collaboration, and feedback. Through reviews, you can validate that your design meets the requirements and follows standards, detect any design flaws or risks that could compromise quality or security, and improve readability, maintainability, and modularity. Additionally, you can share your design ideas with other developers, testers, analysts, and stakeholders to get their input and suggestions. Furthermore, you can learn from other designers' approaches and solutions to enhance your own skills and knowledge.

2 How to prepare for software design reviews?

Before beginning to review software designs, it is important to prepare yourself and your design artifacts to make the most of the review process. To do this, you should define the scope, objectives, and criteria of the review, choose the appropriate level and format of design documentation, select a suitable review method and mode, and invite relevant reviewers and stakeholders. Additionally, depending on the purpose and audience of the review, you may need to provide different levels of detail and abstraction in your design documentation. This could include UML diagrams, flowcharts, pseudocode, or code snippets. Furthermore, there are various methods and modes of reviewing software designs such as peer reviews, walkthroughs, inspections or audits. You should choose the one that best fits your needs, resources and constraints. Finally, depending on the scope and objectives of the review you may need to involve different types of reviewers and stakeholders such as other developers, testers, analysts, managers or customers. It is important to invite them in advance and provide them with necessary information and materials for the review.

3 How to conduct software design reviews?

In order to conduct software design reviews in a structured and effective way, you should follow a review agenda and plan that specifies the roles, responsibilities, tasks, and timelines of the participants. Additionally, you should use a set of criteria and checklist to evaluate and verify the design, as well as ask and answer questions to clarify any design choices or assumptions. Furthermore, it is important to record and report the review findings and outcomes using a consistent format or tool. Following these tips will help ensure that your software design reviews are successful.

4 How to follow up on software design reviews?

After conducting software design reviews, it's important to follow up to ensure that the review findings and outcomes are addressed and implemented, and that the review process is improved and refined. To do this, prioritize and resolve the review issues and actions by assigning responsible parties, setting deadlines, and refining design documentation. Additionally, communicate and share the review results and changes with relevant reviewers and stakeholders, while also collecting their feedback. Lastly, evaluate and improve the review process based on lessons learned and best practices identified from the review, as well as measure its effectiveness with metrics such as number of issues, time/cost of review, satisfaction of participants, etc.

5 What are some software design review tools and resources?

To support and facilitate your software design review process, you can use a variety of tools and resources. UML tools, such as Visual Paradigm, Enterprise Architect, and Lucidchart, enable you to create, edit, and visualize your software design using the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Code review tools like GitHub, Bitbucket, and CodeGuru allow you to review, comment, and collaborate on your software code. Review management tools like Jira, Trello, and Asana can help you manage, organize, and track your review process. Additionally, review guidelines and templates provide best practices, standards, and conventions for conducting software design reviews. Examples of these include IEEE Standard for Software Reviews and Audits, Software Design Review Checklist Template, and Software Design Review Report Template.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?