Peer Reviews in Action
Overview
Peer Reviews have been shown in many studies and through empirical evidence “in the wild” to be the single most effective technique for reducing the level of defects in delivered systems
Many organisations pay lip service to conducting reviews, unfortunately reviews are often neglected (“not enough time”, “too hard”) or done badly, thus perpetuating the software crisis of systems not meeting real business needs.
This course provides guidelines for and practice in conducting some of the different types of review available, including:
- Inspection
- Team Review
- Walkthrough
- Desk-check
- Pass around
- Ad-hoc
The course discusses the trade-off between formality, cost, rigor and quality to provide guidelines for selecting the appropriate review type for different work products.
Intended For
Anyone involved in producing or reviewing documents that need to clearly convey business or system requirements.
Prerequisites
Participants are expected to have some understanding of basic business practice, and to be involved in the production and/or review of documents or other work products (architecture, design, source code…) for implementing business systems.
Learning outcomes
By the end if this course participants will be able to:
- Understand why peer reviews add value at all stages of development
- Understand the differences between formal and informal peer review types
- Understand the roles of participants in the various forms of peer review
- Understand the various categories of “items”
- Use appropriate Peer Review tools to recognise and record “items”
- Understand how to conduct a successful peer review
- Understand the purpose and value of metrics in peer reviews
- Participate effectively in formal & informal peer reviews.
Content
- Course Introduction
- Background facts & figures
- Peer review types
- Inspections and Team reviews in detail
- Practice Inspection: Overview Meeting
- Practice Inspection: Checking
- Practice Inspection: Review Meeting
- Other Types of Peer Reviews
- Making Reviews Work for You
- Conclusion and Debriefing
Method Used
Lecturing is kept to the minimum necessary. A participative approach is used to enable learning by discovery.
This course contains a comprehensive case study that the participants work through either using the tools or by hand to reinforce and cement the learning.
Course notes, including guides, templates and checklists. References to Web sites and further reading.
