Best Practices for Effective Code Reviews

Another best practice is to schedule code reviews the same time each day, or the same day and time each week. This helps to prevent scheduling conflicts arising with multiple team members.

You are reviewing the code, not the coder. It is a best practice to give praise when the code conforms to standards, point out when it doesn’t. Praise effective solutions, offer better solutions and alternatives when they’re suboptimal. Take a moment to explain code defects and how they may impact other parts of the code.

IEEE 1028-2008 provides a comprehensive list of everything that should be recorded. At a minimum, keep a record of everyone who participated in the code review, when it was conducted, and the reasons why. This should also include a detailed list of what was reviewed, and what the results were (number of defects found and fixed, new solutions adopted, and other remedial, post-review, efforts to be taken).