1. Formal and Informal Peer Reviews
Peer Review Process
Formal and Informal Peer Reviews
Good Afternoon,
In today’s class we are going to focus on the relationship between organizational structure, organizational culture; organizational design and strategy in a global environment.

2. Objectives Understand the Peer Review process
Subprocess to the Verification and Validation Process
Understand how defect measures are used for process improvement

3. Peer Review Because... Deliver quality products
Catch defects earlier in the lifecycle
Improve skills and knowledge
Improve process performance

4. CMMI Basis Peer reviews are part of Verification
“...to ensure that selected work products meet their specified requirements.”
SG 2: “Peer reviews are performed on selected work products.”
The Peer Review Process is an appendix to the Verification and Validation Process
BPS/16-Verification and Validation

5. Peer Review Roles Employee Responsibilities Project Manager
1. Identifies and schedules reviews
2. Identifies personnel resource needs
3. Assigns moderator
4. Does not attend the review
Author
1. Creates work product to be reviewed
2. Prepares and present overview, as needed
3. Completes rework
Moderator
1. Works with producer/developer/author to schedule formal peer review
2. Ensures that review discussion focuses on the product and not the producer/developer/author.
3. Briefs inspection team roles
4. Distributes inspection materials
5. Ensures that the recorder documents all errors and action items
Quality Assurance (QA)
1. Ensures PR process is followed
Reviewer
1. Reviews work products for errors and issues, recording review time spent and findings on an inspection problem report (IPR)
Scribe (recorder)
1. Completes the IPR, recording duration of the PR and all defects and issues identified

6. Terms
Defect—A flaw that causes a work product to fail to perform a required function or behave contrary to documented expectations
Major defect—A defect that if not corrected prevents the product from meeting its requirements. Requires correction before the work product may be promoted to the next phase in the lifecycle.
Minor defect—A defect that if not corrected means the product will not meet specifications, design, or standards completely, but will not prevent the product from otherwise operating or serving its purpose.
A project manager may decide to permit a work product to be promoted to the next phase in the lifecycle without all minor defects being corrected. This decision must be documented on the IPR form.

7. Terms
Other defect—A deviation from standards and specifications; or a trivial issue, such as a format/spelling/grammar errors or other typos that do not affect meaning.
A large number of format/spelling/grammar errors or other typos may constitute one major defect because a document that does not get the spelling/grammar/formatting right may be perceived as unlikely to have the facts right either.
If disregard for coding standards results in code that, while meeting the requirements, will be difficult to maintained or will complicate current or future integration or interfaces, it may constitute a major defect.
Defect type—A classification of a defect indicating what sort of error was committed. The choice of types differs depending on what is being reviewed.

8. Types of Peer Reviews Material Reviewed Type of Review Code Design
Document
Requirements
Type of Review
Formal
Informal

9. Material Reviewed
This table shows a standard arrangement of work products and types of reviews, but this scheme may be modified and documented in the SDP.
Work Product PR
Type
Recommended Participants
Major software units
Required
Formal
Experts in the coding language; testers
Major software unit design
Informal
Requirements analysts, developers/coders; testers
Minor software units, updates
Recommended
Another developer
Requirements
Requirements specialists, designers, coders, testers
System test description
Testers, technical writers, QA analysts
User's guide/release notes
Developers; requirements analysts; technical writers

10. Resources (in BPS) Process /13-Verification and Validation
Peer Review Form
/13-Verification and Validation/ Tools Guides and Templates/ Peer Review Form.xls
Guidelines
/13-Verification and Validation/ Tools Guides and Templates/ Guidelines for <x> Reviews.doc
Standards
/Organizational Process Assets/Standards

11. Formal Peer Reviews Planning and preparing Conducting the peer review
Documenting the findings
Follow-up work

12. Formal PR: Plan and Prepare
Project manager selects reviewers
Moderator sets time and place
Two days (at least) before the review, sends:
Invitation
Material to be reviewed
IPR form
Review guidelines
Standard to be used

13. Formal PR: Conduct the Review
Discuss the work product, not the author
Come prepared with a list of defects and questions
Set a time limit
Do not solve problems during the peer review, document them
Consensus on major/minor/other, category

14. Formal PR: Document Findings
Complete information
Select Type
Size and time are required for measurements

15. Formal PR: Document Findings
Types listed on page 1 and in process
Defect Recording
Follow-Up Work
Disposition: Deferred, Closed, No Action

16. Formal PR: Document Findings

17. Formal PR: Follow-Up
Project manager and author determine what to correct
Finish IPR form and put it in the project’s SDLC Info/Peer Review directory.
QA checks to see whether action items are completed
Billing:
Follow-Up Work on IPR form does not include defect correction, just work to complete the form
PR review, meeting, and form work bill to Peer Reviews
Defect correction work bill to Debug

18. Informal PR Project manager assigns a reviewer
Findings can be in IPR, , annotation, etc.
Findings still go in /Peer Reviews
Author updates work products based on the review results, consulting with the reviewer as needed.
As in formal peer review follow-ups, the project manager resolves disagreements over defects and other issues.
Once all the changes have been agreed to and made, the author forwards the modified work product to the project manager or to the CM group for inclusion in the project baseline.

19. Measurements
Collected in MA spreadsheet
Reviews Page
Dashboard Page

20. Additional Analysis
Negative correlation between % of IPR time spent on review and defects per review hour

21. Additional Analysis
Correlation between review time per LOC and defects found per LOC

22. Review VER SP 2.1: Prepare for peer reviews How do we prepare?
Schedule
Select work product for review
Invitation
Guidelines/standards
Review material
Training

23. Review VER SP 2.2: Conduct peer reviews
Things to remember during a peer review
Review the work, not the author
Don’t solve defects, document them
Develop consensus on defects, type, category
List defects on IPR form
Correct defects, update form

24. Review VER SP 2.3: Analyze peer review data
Data collected where? Used for what?
IPR forms
MA spreadsheet
Additional analysis
Used for process improvement, to check process efficiency, etc.