Code review is an important part of Agile; it helps teams become self-organizing; it also helps everyone in the team to have similar skill sets.
What’s a Code Review?
Once a developer finishes writing code for a feature or to fix an issue, another developer goes over it and checks the following:
- Errors in logic
- If all cases are completely implemented as per requirement
- If new automated tests are adequate for the new code or they need to be rewritten
- Whether the new code adheres to existing guidelines
Code Review Benefits for Agile Teams
As work is decentralized across the team, Agile teams have significant benefits. There isn’t one single individual who knows the entire code – knowledge of the code base is shared across the team.
Code reviews result in shared knowledge
Flexibility is at the core of agile teams: they need to be able to quickly start executing a task that is getting backlogged. Code review helps teams to take new work head on; full-stack engineers are able to manage server side as well as front end work. Code reviews increase the knowledge base of developers as they are exposed to innovative ideas and technology, and this helps them write better code.
Better estimates
Estimation is basically teamwork; when product knowledge is shared across the team, it can make accurate estimates. The original developer can offer good feedback and estimation as more features are included in the current code. Moreover, the person reviewing the code gets to know about the complex nature and problems related to that section of the code base. This leads to multiple informed inputs, enabling stronger and more dependable final estimates .
Increased Freedom and Flexibility
With code reviews, knowledge is shared across the team, meaning that no single person is the sole point of contact on a piece of the code. If one team member needs to take some time off for some reason, another team member can take up where the first one leaves. This offers a lot of flexibility and free time to the developers on the team.
Mentoring New Members
A crucial feature of Agile is that new members can be mentored by the more seasoned developers or engineers. With code reviews, more conversations about the code take place, often uncovering hidden knowledge seniors have about the code base, and this gives fresh perspective to the newbies. This is not to say that code review is only about review of code written by juniors or mentoring them; code review happens across the team in all directions.
