Code reviews are another software practice it’s tough to buy into until you see the value - which has recently become apparent to me after finding a very effective way of doing them with a number of added benefits.
I discovered this through an unintentional experiment: after having a single person review a new piece of code, we sat the whole team down and a walk through of the same code. Together we exposed many more opportunities for improvement, and started a lot of good discussions on standards, reuse, and code quality. That continued this week, where we found that even that “peer-tested” and “done” code still needed some fixes.
Another benefit was that it gave everyone a chance to see other parts of the system; that kind of cross-training makes a team much more flexible and resilient to turnover and absences. It’s also a nice chance for people to show off work that would otherwise stay in the dark. Overall, though, I think what really impressed me was how much a review by the entire team encouraged conversation and put quality in the spotlight.
