But don't underplay soft skills. Marc Carkeek, VP of development and support at UC4 Software, a provider of workload automation and IT process optimization solutions, says, "You need to ask questions and prompt discussion, while ."

Theron Welch, software mentor at the Microsoft Asia Center for Hardware, says, "An independent moderator can keep the discussion from getting too personal. A good moderator is someone good at running meetings, keeping people on track and focusing on important issues."

Peer Reviews Versus Code Reviews

Some developers may disagree with the above, believing that code reviews should never have a "boss" in the room, that all such meetings should be peer reviews.

Jay S. Hemmady, a former technology chief who is now working at a stealth eCommerce portal, says coders' managers might not want to attend if the meeting is meant to be a true peer-review. It's hard to avoid the feeling that a person's performance is being measured if a manager is present, he points out. "In larger organizations, this is easy to accomplish without managers. In smaller ones, often the manager is the more experienced programmer/coder!" he adds.