Work Guidelines: Reviews
Topics
Types of Reviews 
In a 1990 standard glossary, IEEE defines three kinds of reviews:
- Review
- A formal meeting at which an artifact, or a set of artifacts are presented to the user, customer, or other interested parties for comments and approval.
- Inspection
- A formal evaluation technique in which artifacts are examined in detail by a person or group other than the author to detect errors, violations of development standards, and other problems.
- Walkthrough
- A review process in which a developer leads one or more members of the development team through a segment of an artifact that he or she has written while the other members ask questions and make comments about technique, style, possible error, violation of development standards, and other problems.
When implemented across teams, reviews also provide opportunities for people to discover design and code from other groups, and increase the chances of detecting common source code, reuse opportunities, and opportunities for generalization. Reviews also provide a way to coordinate the architectural style among various groups.
Review Criteria
At the end of most activities in the Unified Process, you will find a review step where you can find review criteria for the activity. These reviews may be formal or informal, depending upon the risk and criticality of the work being reviewed.
Guidelines for Formal Review
Meetings
Select Appropriate Reviewers
- The number of reviewers should be between 2 and 7 persons; fewer reviewers jeopardize the quality of the review, and more reviewers prevent interactive discussion essential to achieving quality results.
- Select reviewers appropriate for the material:
- those who have the background to understand the material presented
- those who have an active stake in the quality of product or artifact being reviewed
Prepare for the Review
- Distribute the review documents in advance (giving reviewers sufficient time to prepare for the review).
- Distribute review agenda and review guidelines along with the review documents.
Manage the Review
- Ensure that the review sticks to the agenda.
- Limit the review meeting to two hours (longer meetings reduce attention to detail and reduce the quality of the review).
- Focus the review on finding problems, not solving them.
Follow-up on the Results
- Prioritize the list of problems.
- If additional investigation is required, assign a small team to research the problem (but not to solve it).
- For problems that can be resolved in the current iteration, assign a person or team to fix the problem.
- Feed the list of unresolved problems into future iteration planning efforts.
