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Design and Code Reviews

by Brian Powell | athenahealth

Incorporating code reviews into your software development process costs nothing, requires little research or effort, and provides a significant improvement in code quality. Of all the investments that your team could potentially make in your software development process, this one is reasonably easy with a very high ROI. Why isn't every team and individual engaging in code reviews? Because it requires humility to post code to a team for critique. Before embarking on integrating design and code reviews, read this classic blog series from LabVIEW Champion Brian Powell

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Details

Understanding Effort and Impact

Incorporating design and code reviews into your process is a very high return on your investment. There are no tricky tools or technologies to learn and master. Your team will learn basic guidelines, customize existing coding style guides, learn VI Analyzer, and then determine how you will integrate code reviews into your existing workflow. There is no “one way” to execute code reviews. You and your team will determine what works best with the most significant impact on code quality

Learning

There are several lessons that you can read and you can download slides, when they are available, for presentation and discussion at user groups. Also, explore the links on the resources tab. Here is the learning checklist for you and members of your team.

The basics of code reviews and good principals for conducting code reviews
VI Analyzer
(Optional) Custom VI Analyzer Tests
Issue Tracking Tools
Other topics: Bookmarks in LabVIEW and other items listed in the resources tab

Practicing

Being the first person in your group to show code for a code review can be a very humbling experience. You and your team may consider holding a few “practice” code review sessions. Explore different ideas and ways to document issues.

Executing

You and your team will need to align on how you want to proceed and commit to consistent execution. Here are some of the questions that you all will need to address:

When in the process is the code review executed?
How will you integrate VI Analyzer?
How will you document your style guidelines and what customizations will you add?
How many peers will participate in the review?
How will issues be tracked?
How will resolutions be checked and signed-off on?
What tools will be used and what is the cost?
Is the group in agreement or does management need to help encourage team buy-in?
How will your team measure success?

Included Learning set Modules

SESSION: OVERVIEW OF PROCESS, STYLE GUIDES, AND AN INTRO TO CODE REVIEWS

This session is a great place to begin the conversation about code reviews. Consider your workflow, how the team shares code, and what structure you can implement now.

SESSION PDF: CODE REVIEW PROCESS

So what is the code review process. What is required? Who is involved? Brian Powell has shared his classic NIWeek session. Come learn from a veteran.

SESSION: LEARNING VI ANALYZER

VI Analyzer is an essential tool in the code review process. Developed by Darren Nattinger, VI Analyzer can find not just cosmetic issues, but issues that can degrade performance or cause bugs during operation. Many software teams require that code go through VI Analyzer before the team performs their review. Learn directly from Darren in his 2015 LabVIEW Developer Days Session.