What is the best practice for performing code reviews?

[Thomas Weyer]

Hello,

I'm working with a team of 4 developers to write new custom apps for internal business needs as well as maintaining over 4 years of prior customization.   When we prepare for a release, we meet to review changes for awareness and feedback - we have   a mix of seasoned developers and very new developers.   Currently we open local update sets and "eyeball" significant changes made by the developer.   This is helpful, but leaves much room for missing review of critical code/configuration changes.

What is the best practice for code/configuration change review?

Are there any tools that can make this a distributed process (aka, Review Assistant from Devart)?

Thanks!

-Thomas Weyer

[Tara Gu]

Hi Thomas,

Our team has the same question. Have you found a solution or workaround yet?

Thanks!

Tara

[Thomas Weyer]

Nothing yet, Tara.   

I'm beginning to believe that people generally don't implement or follow a code review process in the ServiceNow platform. 

I see Sachin's reply below.... adding comments there. 

Thanks!

-Thomas

[sachin_namjoshi]

Hi Thomas,

We worked on scaled agile framework to implement customizations in our instance.

As part of SAFe framework, we generate code review scrum tasks for each story.

Code review task has code review checklist attached so that every update set gets reviewed before moving to higher instance.

You can also use team development feature to do code review for pushing, pulling changes between your instances.

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/kingston-application-development/page/build/team-development/concept/c_CodeReview.html

Regards,

Sachin

[Thomas Weyer]

Thanks for the reply, Sachin!  Interesting coincidence in that my company has implemented scaled agile framework in our process just this year.  

Since I haven't found a best practice or formal process for code/customization review within ServiceNow, I've also started to write customization similar to your description.  I have created a simple Code Review task and added this as a related list to the User Story. I'm still working out the details as doing this in my spare cycles. 

I looked into Team Development.... it's really not for our group as we have multiple devs with only one DEV instance. 

Once I have a more polished process, I'll share on community. 

Thanks!

-Thomas