White Paper –
Software Reviews – Good Practice
Anything can be reviewed – and reviews can be applied at any stage in the life cycle.
Reviews applied early in the lifecycle detect defects early and so can help prevent large amounts of rework, arguably making them the most cost effective software engineering practice available to developers and testers.
This paper initially introduces the main objectives of reviews and the different review types as defined in the IEEE 1028 standard. It points out that defining specific review types is not especially useful as all reviews follow the same generic process – and different organizations should implement reviews to suit their individual situation.
The paper concentrates on suggesting ways of improving review effectiveness, pointing out that the majority of defects are found in individual preparation rather than in the review meeting. Several different approaches to individual reviewing/reading are described next.
Finally the paper considers metrics and measurement in reviews and the tools used to support reviews.
