In May 2006, we wrapped up the largest case study of peer code review ever published, done at Cisco Systems®. The software was MeetingPlace® — Cisco's computer-based audio and video teleconferencing solution. Over 10 months, 50 developers on three continents reviewed every code change before it was checked into version control. We collected data from 2500 reviews of a total of 3.2 million lines of code.

This article summarizes our findings.

In this article, we explore why almost no one does "proper" inspections and set up the case for lightweight peer code review. Try it. You'll like it!

In the ever-growing complexity of dependencies amongst products at the build and run time level, there is the challenge of managing increasingly separate items that must work together upon release. This is where the concepts, disciplines, roles, and responsibilities of release management help. Release management focuses on both the engineering disciplines that must bring a specific project release together along with the management of external dependencies across products that must accompany a release.

As more test items exist, there is a tendency for them to evolve due to the changes to requirements and code and, therefore, must be managed effectively. When there are an increasing number of test items, this increases the risk of failing to accurately track all test items, particularly when this is done manually. This is where configuration management (CM) can help.