Question

In your “enterprise” work environment, how are engineers held accountable for performing code inspections and unit testing? What processes do you follow (formal methodology or custom process) to ensure the quality of your software? Do you or have you tried implementing a developer ‘signoff’ sheet for deliverables?

Thanks in advance!

Update: I forgot to mention we are using Code Collaborator to perform our inspections. The problem is getting people to ‘get it’ and buy into doing them outside of a core group of people. As stalbot pointed out below it is a cultural change but the question becomes, how do you change your culture to promote quality initiatives such as reviews/unit tests?

Answer 1

If you want to ensure that every changelist gets reviewed, before checkin, then you could have your source control tool reject unreviewed checkins. For example, a trigger could reject checkins without ‘CodeReview: ‘ in the checkin comment. Although people could still lie, they could also be held accountable.

If you want to ensure that every changelist gets reviewed, after checkin, then you could see if Code Collaborator will play nicely with your source control system and automatically make a review task after each checkin (push or pull; whatever works). After that, use whatever ‘polite annoyance’ features Code Collaborator has, to make sure reviews actually get done.

If you want people to review only some checkins, not all checkins, then good luck with that.