Table of Contents

Why Should Your Team Conduct Peer Reviews?

by Linda Westfall

What is a Peer Review?

The IEEE/ISO/IEC Systems and Software Engineering Vocabulary defines a review as “a process or meeting during which a work product, or set of work products, is presented to project personnel, managers, users, customers, or other interested parties for comment or approval.” [IEEE/ISO/IEC 2017]

A peer review is a special type of technical review where one or more of the Author’s peers evaluate a work product to identify defects, obtain a confidence level that the product meets its requirements, and/or identify opportunities to improve that work product. The Author of a work product is the person that either originally produced that work product or the person who is currently responsible for maintaining that work product.

Informal vs. Formal Peer Reviews

by Linda Westfall

What is a Peer Review?

Peer reviews can vary greatly in their level of formality. At the most informal end of the peer review spectrum, a software practitioner can ask a colleague to, “Please take a look at this for me.” These types of informal peer reviews are performed all of the time. It is just good practice to get a second pair of eyes on a work product when the practitioner is having problems or needs a second opinion. As illustrated in the figure above, these informal reviews are done ad hoc with no formal process, no preparation, and no quality records or metrics. Defects are usually reported either verbally or as redlined mark-ups on a draft copy of the work product. Any rework that results from these informal peer reviews is up to the author’s discretion.

Types of Peer Reviews

by Linda Westfall

There are many different types of peer reviews called by many different names in the software industry. Peer reviews go by names such as inspections, team reviews, technical reviews, walk-throughs, pair reviews, pass-arounds, ad-hoc reviews, desk checks, and others. However, I have found that most of these can be classified into one of three major peer review types:

Risk-Based Peer Reviews

by Linda Westfall

Risk-based peer reviews focus on the identification of software work products with the highest risk exposure. In risk-based peer reviews, risk probability is the estimated likelihood that a yet undiscovered, important defect will exist in the work product after the completion of the peer review. Multiple factors or probability indicators may contribute to a work product having a higher or lower risk probability. These probability indicators may vary from project to project or from environment to environment. Therefore, each organization or project should determine and maintain a list of probability indicators to consider when assigning risk probabilities to its software work product.