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

[ScienceSoft]

Hi,

1st of all you need to decide for whole your team what would be the rules that you all will follow. And only after that code review makes sense.

• Take your time and compose naming and codding conventions
• In case of ServiceNow is it also good to follow ServiceNow advice (for example, try to use less client scripts if possible because they affect performance and so on.)
• Let everybody know that they need to follow these rules
• If you have you company's tips&trick of using some approach - make it aware to everybod
• etc.

After these steps are done - you are "eligible" to think about code review and all the time you've spend for preparation will pay you back with good quality code and same language among developers.

[Ben Beetle]

Thanks for the response! You have an interesting point of view.  I agree - team needs to decide on conventions and rules, etc - however I would say that the code review process is a part of that.  Not something you are only "eligible" to think about until all other rules and conventions are decided. 🙂 

[Moy1]

This is a hard question to answer as review of code in ServiceNow requires good documentation process to be followed by the developers. Looking at update set entries tells you what changes have been made but does not give you the full picture or the context. ServiceNow provides some framework to help in this endeavor but it boils down to how disciplined and detailed your developers are:

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

There is also a very useful blog on development best practices:

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_blog&sys_id=806e2eaddbd0dbc01dcaf3231f9619ec

[Friedrich Gehri]

Hasn't there been yet anything to answer this question?

I guess most software developers know (and probably like) the review process of Github/Gitlab/...
Is there anything comparable for ServiceNow? An easy way to compare the changes made, add comments and suggest changes?

Does the team development feature have these possibilites? Just looking at the documentation there, I cannot see anything like this, but maybe it is hidden somewhere ....

Best,
Friedrich