Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!gatech!ncsuvx!mcnc!duke!romeo!crm
From: crm@romeo.cs.duke.edu (Charlie Martin)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: code reviews
Message-ID: <14810@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Date: 20 Jun 89 18:39:33 GMT
References: <12047@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <116@opel.UUCP>
Sender: news@duke.cs.duke.edu
Reply-To: crm@romeo.UUCP (Charlie Martin)
Organization: Duke University CS Dept.; Durham, NC
Lines: 36

In article <116@opel.UUCP> johnk@opel.UUCP (John Kennedy) writes:
>In article <12047@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> tada@athena.mit.edu (Michael Zehr) writes:
>[...]
>>
>>Since part of my job here is to improve programmer productivity, i'm
>>interested in eventually implementing some sort of procedure for
>>periodic peer reviews.  Does anyone have suggestions or
>>reccommendations?
>>
>>michael j zehr
>
>
>I can't help but chuckle when I see code reviews and productivity in the
>same paragraph.  It's good for the project, it's what the customer wants,
>but be assured that it's an increase in overhead and a decrease in productivity.
>
>I wish this weren't true.
>
>John

The way I've heard it is that the use of formal reviews has the effect
of lowering lifecycle cost and cost considered through delivery.  It
does have the effect of increasing overhead cost *during* design and
coding, but most methodologies have that effect.

The point here is that coding cost is only about 15% of total cost in
waterfall methodologies (harder to evaluate in, say, incremental
development) and it's worth while to increase coding cost by 25% (so
overall increase is 5%) to gain 10-20 % over all.

As usual, I'm not typing this where I can lay hands on the references,
but several studies have been done that show of all methods studied
that can be applied to software development, reviews have the greatest
impact on cost reduction.

Charlie Martin (crm@cs.duke.edu,mcnc!duke!crm)