Review Overview

This section describes a typical review and its phases.  Code Collaborator supports the following workflow out of the box, however it can be configured in many other ways.

Phase 1: Plan Review

You start a new review by clicking the "New Review" menu option. Reviews have many attributes including title, custom fields, version control changes, issue-tracker associations, file attachments, URL's, and human participants.

Code Collaborator integrates with your version control system so attaching version control changes (either before or after they are checked into version control) is easy and error-free.

Code Collaborator also integrates with issue-tracking systems so you can keep code changes, reviews, and issues-fixed together.

Participants are assigned roles so you can see who is the author, who are the reviewers, who is moderating or observing the review, and so forth. See below for more information about roles.

Once the review is built, it moves into Phase 2 and the participants are notified of the new review by e-mail.

Phase 2: Inspection

All participants are presented with the files, file-differences, and other review material. Everyone can make comments on individual lines of code or on entire documents.

Comments work a bit like "instant message" chat and a bit like "newsgroups." If everyone is chatting at the same time, you have a real-time "instant message" environment so the review can progress swiftly. If one or more participants are separated by many time zones or just aren't currently at the computer, the chat looks like a newsgroup where you post comments and receive e-mails when someone responds. This means Code Collaborator works equally well no matter where your developers or reviewers are located.

If reviewers find problems, they open defects right from the web interface, associated with the file and line number if applicable. Defects are tracked through Code Collaborator and can optionally be mirrored into an external issue-tracking system.

When the reviewers are finished, the next phase of the review depends on whether defects were found. If no defects were found, the review is finished and there's nothing else to do. If defects were found, the review moves to Phase 3.

Phase 3: Fix Defects

The authors go back and fix the defects found.

When the authors are satisfied with their fixes, the fixes are uploaded into the review. The authors then indicate they are ready for the fixes to be validated.

For validation the review moves back to Phase 2: Inspection. Reviewers have access to the new changes as well as the original changes and comments.

If new defects are opened, the review can then be moved back into Phase 3 for fixing again. If no new defects are found and the reviewers are satisfied, the review is finished.