Chapter 10. Reviews

You can check a program for quality by testing. But how do you check that the test plan being used for testing has the right test cases? And how do you check the design for design errors or check the requirement specifications for defects? Reviews are the most effective and commonly used method for identifying defects, not only in nonexecutable documents such as the test plan and design document but also in code. Reviews also give managers visibility into the progress of the project, something that can help them to take timely corrective actions. For a project manager, reviews offer some other advantages as well:

Through reviews, the best talent in the organization can be utilized in a project even if they are not assigned to it.

Reviews help preserve team motivation by giving people a sense of achievement, participation, and recognition.

Through reviews, team members can develop their skills and senior people can mentor less-experienced colleagues.

Reviews help prevent defects by creating more awareness about them.

This chapter discusses the review process employed at Infosys and explains how data is collected and used to monitor and control these reviews. We also briefly consider how experimentation was used to convince project managers of the value of group reviews.