Code reviews are not enough
It’s clear to me that code reviews are not enough. They give you a false sense of confidence. It is just enough to make you feel like you don’t need something else. The missing links are context and engagement. The best clarification I can think of for this comes from Scrum. They use the (unfortunate) example of hens vs. pigs. When it comes to breakfast, the pigs are fully committed. The hens, well… just aren’t.
Here’s an example that I think will help to illustrate my point. In this instance, my code was under review. I was the pig. Everyone else was a hen. They are interested, but their engagement is inherently limited. They don’t know the decision process. They don’t know the whys. This task was not assigned to them. Conversely, they had other things assigned to them, which implies higher priority.
During a code review it’s almost impossible to discuss whys. There is no reason to bring them up. You see small snippets of the entire puzzle. You can check for coding style but it’s difficult to check coding concepts. It’s very hard to give them the time and energy they require to be somewhat effective. Reviewers need both the time to read the code and the time to keep up to date with all the details of the system; they can rapidly become the bottleneck in this process, and the process soon degenerates.
Matt Scilipoti
matts@scilipoti.name
github.com/mattscilipoti
