How can you ensure your team follows best code review practices?

it's crucial to define clear goals. This involves setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) objectives for the code review process. These goals might include improving code quality, enhancing security, ensuring consistency, or facilitating knowledge transfer. It's important that all team members understand and agree on these goals. Regular training sessions can help to reinforce the importance of code review and update the team on best practices. Additionally, using tools and metrics to track progress towards these goals can provide tangible benchmarks for success and areas for improvement. Regular feedback among team members are key to maintaining a consistent and effective code review process.

Include the development team in these conversations. The more consensus that goes into these definitions, the better the result. The team is also the closest to the work product and most familiar with the needs of the project. Use that perspective and allow it to shape the approach to code reviews so that everyone - submitter, reviewer, and, ultimately, end user/customer get what they need out of the process.

Here are some strategies to help you establish & maintain effective code review processes: Establish Guidelines Training & Onboarding Encourage Positive Culture Automated Tools Peer Review Rotation Set Clear Objectives Use Code Review Checklists Regular Code Review Meetings Encourage Feedback Ownership Continuous Improvement Incorporate Continuous Integration Celebrate Successes By implementing these strategies, you can create a more effective & collaborative code review environment within your team, ultimately leading to higher code quality & more efficient development processes.

Just make sure goals are lear and defined and most importantly understood by everyone in the team. Also not all comments needs to be fixed right away, some might be converted to separate tasks for a future.

A code review checklist is most effective when it can be automated. DevOps tools such as pull request, pipeline, lint, sonar, Veracode... can help both the coder easily and quickly obtain concise and consistent feedback. It also freed up the reviewer's time and effort to focus on areas where critical thinking and creativity are needed.

Here are some ways in which checklists can be helpful in code reviews: Consistency: Checklists promote consistency by ensuring that all aspects of the code are reviewed in a standardized manner. Comprehensive Review Guidance for Reviewers & Authors Focus on Critical Aspects Training & Onboarding Efficiency Reduced Subjectivity Continuous Improvement Documentation Risk Mitigation Learning & Knowledge Transfer Visibility & Accountability In summary, checklists provide a systematic & organized approach to code reviews, promoting consistency, efficiency, & continuous improvement within a development team.

Nothing breaks a team down more quickly than an overall critical attitude. If that comes through in a code review, it can be even more devastating. Coach your teams to always assume positive intent on behalf of everyone else. If you’ve hired well, then this should not be a large stretch. In code reviews, remind reviewers that the best outcome is both clean code and a learning opportunity. If there are issues to be addressed in the code, then a collaborative approach to solving the issue - rather than a critical message - is the most effective way to ensure quality and to raise the bar for the engineering team in general.

It is important to ensure that the team has a mindset of continuous improvement rather than criticism. It is also important to celebrate successes.

Strongly agree with it. The code reviewers should be respectful and must be keen to learn from that code. There are some times when the code reviewers couldn't understand a piece of code, but that doesn't invalidate that piece. A better choice would be to ask politely if there are any confusions and sort things out.

Sometimes synchronous communication may be helpful. Schedule a meeting where the reviewer and the code writer can work together, like in pair programming. It may result in faster results, more opportunities to share knowledge and straighten the relationship. It is also easier for the code writer to understand that the reviewer is not just “judging”.

Communication is THE most important thing. This should be in all forms and types. For e.g.: 1. The best practices should be documented properly. 2. Automation should exist to tell the developers if the best practices are not followed via GitHub comments or Git hooks. 3. Every best practice should be implemented with proper reasoning, so that it does not look like a belief system. 4. Code reviews should always be as polite and conversational as possible. Rude code reviews do more harm than good.

One of the things I have found helpful in my previous role is to rotate reviewers regularly to ensure a variety of perspectives and to prevent burnout. This helps in distributing knowledge across the team.