None of this will do any good, of course, if the participants are unwilling to be in the room.

Cop the Right Attitude

There are two real management dangers in code reviews: and . Most developers raised the subject of establishing the right attitude in creating an effective code review. This is usually in the context of ensuring that developers are willing to listen to input on how to improve the code-otherwise, why are you bothering?-and avoiding the unfortunately human tendency to turn these meetings into pissing contests.

To a great degree, this is about trust. How much can the developer trust others she works with to give her ? In a healthy environment where the culture is supportive and everyone wants to help other team members, generally this is not a problem. (Appreciate it.) But then again, it might be. There is nothing so personal as the art someone creates, and developers can be awfully protective of their work and anxious for praise. (So can article authors, by the way. I'm just sayin'.)

Doug Carrier, the product manager for Devpartner (note: another vendor), points out that developers can sometimes identify themselves a little too closely with the code they produce. "Code reviews can make the developer feel unduly criticized, humiliated or otherwise . Development Alpha types typically emerge and defend their supreme role in the code review process. This can unleash a range of organizational, behavioral and emotional issues within a development group."