With 8 engineer employees that report to me, I spend a lot of time in meetings and meetings and code reviews and 1-on-1’s.
Coaching so many on multiple projects, as it turns out, takes a lot out of your day!
Here’s the outlook meeting template I use for weekly individual code reviews with my staff. I find it useful to set clear rules so that we don’t waste each other’s time. We’re professional software engineers and we talk about the architecture and not line by line accuracy or holy wars over tabs/spaces – that’s what per commit buddy checks are for 🙂
Hello %USERNAME%, This time slot is your time slot for us to review your code.
It may get moved due to schedule conflicts, or illness, or emergencies, or whatever – but we will strive to do this EVERY WEEK.
What this is NOT:
• Painstaking analysis for perfectly formatted code
• Checking for C-style off-by-one errors. I expect that you will test all your code in a debugger & you will find that type of error anyways.
• The Spanish Inquisition
• A replacement for buddy checks before each commit. Buddy checks are required for every commit.
What this is:
• A professional discussion of the structure and effectiveness of your code
• Feedback on the readability of your code. I follow the 3am rule: can I read it at 3am? (..after being woken up by GNOC because servers running it are crashing and everyone is screaming over losing customers and getting bad press)
• An opportunity to teach me about how your code works
What I hope to achieve:
• We will both Learn and Grow as software engineers
• Higher quality code
• Shared knowledge of how your code works
Format:
• Show me your work since our last review (usually a week)
• Talk me through it – Think of me as a rubber duck (http://blog.codinghorror.com/
• I will provide feedback
• You will take notes
• If I am wrong, you will tell me why. I do not know all.
• You will make changes as needed after the meeting.
-Jason De Arte