Review Code

Code reviews can be extremely effective driving systematic reuse. To be sure, there are multiple objectives with code reviews (e.g. adhering to naming standards, detect defect, write consistent comments, etc.). Additionally, they can help with reuse in the following ways:

• Reviews happen prior to code being placed in production – they give you a chance to extract, build, or integrate reusable assets.

• Code reviews often identify opportunities to refactor – refactoring to reuse. Have you ever had a review where someone said, “you know what, you should talk to Joe, since he is building a similar thing…” or “…we should use the existing service for implementing this story.”

• Reviews help discover reusable assets – you might include classes and interfaces (not necessarily neatly demarcated) – in a component that can really be split up into two or more components. It may be appropriate to slice up the logic to ensure the existing component isn’t too monolithic

• Reviews are very effective in preventing defects – with reusable assets, quality is everything and the act of reviewing them is critical to their stability and production-readiness. These can be extended to unit tests and documentation as well.

• Reviews are a neat opportunity to communicate to at least a sub-set of the team what reusable assets exist and how they can be leveraged. Often times, when assets are mentioned as-is, they may not be that well received. Place them within the context of a real project, a real deliverable, and a tangible need – now the communication is much more effective.

As more developers pitch in and learn from each other, the reviews will become a critical part of how you develop and evolve reusable assets.