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...
  • 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. 

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.