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Jason Cohen

Member for

20 years 4 months

Jason Cohen is the author of Best Kept Secrets of Peer Code Review, the definitive work on the new process of Lightweight peer review with 7,000 copies in circulation. Jason conducted and published the largest case study of peer code review at Cisco Systems®—2,500 reviews over 10 months with a real, delivered product. Jason is also the founder of Smart Bear Inc., makers of Code Collaborator that assists developers and managers with lightweight peer code review processes. Jason has spoken at many conferences, trade shows, and ACM/IEEE society meetings across the country.

Company
Smart Bear Inc
Industry
Computer Software - SaaS
Interests
Configuration Management
Defect or Incident Management
Design and Architecture
Development
Measurement and Estimating
Process Improvement
Requirements
Reviews and Inspections
Software Testing
Country
United States

Jason Cohen is the author of Best Kept Secrets of Peer Code Review, the definitive work on the new process of Lightweight peer review with 7,000 copies in circulation. Jason conducted and published the largest case study of peer code review at Cisco Systems®—2,500 reviews over 10 months with a real, delivered product. Jason is also the founder of Smart Bear Inc., makers of Code Collaborator that assists developers and managers with lightweight peer code review processes. Jason has spoken at many conferences, trade shows, and ACM/IEEE society meetings across the country.

All Articles by Jason Cohen


All Stories by Jason Cohen

Checklists – You build me up just to knock me down

The code review checklist is the bane of developers.  Thirty-odd check-boxes await, each requiring thoughtful consideration before the liberating tick mark can be applied.  Twenty source files, freshly altered, are awaiting verification.  The math is simple: 20 x 30 = 600 decisions, no matter how you tackle the problem.  This is going to suck.

Lightweight Code Reviews: Team Building for the Rest of UsThe author explores the people side of peer code reviews. Besides the technical and quality benefits, peer code reviews help build better teams. Believe it!
The Largest Case Study of Code Reviews—EverIn 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.
The Pros and Cons of Four Kinds of Code ReviewsThe authors explore the pros and cons of four other common styles of code reviews—over-the-shoulder, email pass-around, pair programming, and tool-assisted reviews—and see which ones is the most promising candidate for practical peer code reviews.
Lightweight Code Reviews A Lightweight Alternative to InspectionsIn 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!
The Case for Peer Review

The $1 billion bug and why no one talks about peer code review.

 It was only supposed to take an hour.

The bad news was that we had a stack of customer complaints. The latest release had a nasty bug that slipped through QA. The good news was that some of those complaints included descriptions of the problem - an unexpected error dialog box - and one report had an attached log file. We just had to reproduce the problem using the log and add this case to the unit tests. Turn around a quick release from the stable branch and we're golden.