Fueling innovative software
July 15-18, 2019
Portland, OR

Implementing cross-functional code reviews

Margaret Fero (Degreed)
5:05pm5:45pm Thursday, July 18, 2019
Secondary topics:  Customer Centered
Average rating: ****.
(4.88, 8 ratings)

Who is this presentation for?

  • Managers, tech leads, and others with influence on the team’s code review process

Level

Beginner

Description

While nearly every development team uses some form of code review, code reviews are frequently used only among developers. While other developers are certainly a valuable audience for your code, nondevelopers can also add value by applying their own perspectives to the work as early on in the process as possible.

Margaret Fero explores the benefits of having representatives from the product management, technical documentation, instructional design, user interface design, and user experience teams on your code review from the start, rather than starting with just developers and adding other teams’ considerations later in the process. A code review is cross-functional if it includes not just members from other teams but also acceptance and implementation of the different types of feedback. She suggests different functional roles that could be included in a code review and what each role can add to the overall success of the review. Margaret explains the benefits of different perspectives and general best practices for choosing your code reviewers (either at the process development level or implementation level) and addresses some relevant change management issues.

Prerequisite knowledge

  • Familiarity with code review processes and common roles on a software team, including developers, designers, product managers, UX specialists, technical writers, and instructional designers

What you'll learn

  • Learn that cross-functional code reviews allow you to take advantage of the diversity within your team to catch a wider variety of problems earlier in the development process than a traditional, all-developer code review enables
Photo of Margaret Fero

Margaret Fero

Degreed

Margaret Fero is a technical writer at Degreed, where she enjoys helping users track all of their skills regardless of how those skills were developed. Previoiusly, she documented software for containerized freight shipping.