Forum Discussion

jtdavies's avatar
jtdavies
Occasional Contributor
10 years ago
Solved

Code review time estimation

We are having trouble estimating the amount of time a code review should take. It's not to hold developers under a microscope (I am one). But to be able to keep project management informed.

 

I was wondering if anyone has a system for estimating. I'm thinking that if I could load the review into CC and get a count of number of lines changed I could come up with an estimate of how long it could take the author and each reviewer. Then after rework, run the test again and come up with a new estimate.

 

Of course, reviewing new code would be a different calculation.

 

Thanks,

John

  • MJackson's avatar
    MJackson
    10 years ago

    It depends on how in-depth the reviews are.  (Also, of course, there's the old saw that if you ask a developer to review ten lines of code they will find five errors, and if you ask them to review 1000 lines of code they will find five errors.)  A rough rule of thumb in my experience is that it's something like 1-2 minutes per file (average of say tens of lines changed per file) if you're experienced with the codebase, doing a moderately in-depth review, and are able to think through the consequences of changes etc. without a great deal of digging around to check things. 

1 Reply

Sort By
  • MJackson's avatar
    MJackson
    Staff
    10 years ago

    It depends on how in-depth the reviews are.  (Also, of course, there's the old saw that if you ask a developer to review ten lines of code they will find five errors, and if you ask them to review 1000 lines of code they will find five errors.)  A rough rule of thumb in my experience is that it's something like 1-2 minutes per file (average of say tens of lines changed per file) if you're experienced with the codebase, doing a moderately in-depth review, and are able to think through the consequences of changes etc. without a great deal of digging around to check things.