Formal Code Review Process 👎🏽 and Collective Code Ownership 👍
Avoid the Formal Code Review Process and embrace “Collective Code Ownership.”
A repost of my article on Medium.
I have written two articles on the Code Review process.
In this article, I will discuss Code Review with an Agile term: “Collective code ownership,” which many of this generation of software professionals are unfamiliar with.
“Collective code ownership, as the name suggests, is the explicit convention that “every” team member is not only allowed, but in fact has a positive duty, to make changes to “any” code file as necessary: either to complete a development task, to repair a defect, or even to improve the code’s overall structure.”
— Agile Alliance
Yes, encourage the developers to change code without permission or waiting. I led a few client projects this way, which worked very well. I know many readers might have doubts. Check out this thought-provoking interview with Steve Jobs.
This spirit of “Collective Code Ownership” contradicts the “waiting for approval” step, as you find in the common code review process nowadays.
Before I go further, I want to point out that “Collective Code Ownership” is an Agile Glossary.
The “Code Review (Requires Approval)” is NOT, but it often appears in commercial tool websites, such as:
Don’t underestimate the commercial influence; it can brainwash people. The following comment from Linus Torvalds, creator of Git and Linux, will wake some people.
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