How to lead a code review

Code reviews are expensive. Time spent reviewing code by managers and peers is time spent not programming. So if you're going to do code reviews, it makes sense to do them well. That's true of the process itself (see Running an Effective Code Review) and the actual line items to which you pay attention during the review.

But the first order of business is to identify who should lead the code review, and who else ought to participate in the code's evaluation. The first answer is fairly clear, but as you'll see, developers have wide-ranging opinions about the second.

Straight-up: the person running the code review needs to be a technical authority and ideally a warm and supportive leader. Micheal Lalande, director of technology at QLogitek, says, "Peer reviews are great, but if the people doing the review are less competent than the person doing the coding, there is little to no value other than possibly training a less experienced developer."

Expertise is important, whether it comes from managerial responsibility (i.e. the project lead) or the subject matter of the code being examined. "The best code reviews were ones where the code reviewer was someone of stature, well known in that particular area of development," says Lalande. "They worked closely with the development team to ensure they understand the context within which the software had been developed, and can work with the developers to understand why particular development decisions were made."

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