Code Review: Why it matters

Megan McCarthy

Alley Interactive partner and chief strategy officer Brad Campeau-Laurion recently spoke at LoopConf about Alley’s internal code review process. Brad explained how Alley’s company-wide code review mandate helps boost collaboration within the development team while also ensuring high standards and quality control for all projects.

Code review is an integral part of the Alley software development workflow. In the four years since reviews became mandatory at Alley, our developers have completed over 21,000 peer reviews. In the talk, Brad shows how the Alley team uses a combination of Slack and Github to manage peer reviews, with custom Slack tools to organize the review queue and automated testing on Github. The end result is cleaner, more efficient code that leads to a better product.

You can watch the entire talk above and check out his slides at this link.

The Latest news

00

“Not Invented Here Syndrome” and How to Prevent It

Not Invented Here syndrome (NIH) is the guilty pleasure that tempts engineering teams into creating bespoke approaches to problems that have already been solved. Even having your eyes opened to the temptation doesn’t immunize you from it. So, how do you know whether a bespoke solution warrants the effort or if it’s just plain hubris?

01

The Lenfest Institute Institutes a Relaunch

The Lenfest Institute is a non-profit organization “whose sole mission is to develop and support sustainable business models for great local journalism.” When they decided to overhaul their web presence, they knew where to turn for strong strategy, design, and development.

02

Starting Up Start Us Up Now

Start Us Up Now: America’s New Business Plan is an initiative of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City-based philanthropy that works in the fields of education and entrepreneurship. Kauffman and Alley worked together to rapidly design and launch a site to disseminate the particulars of the policy plan, support a targeted communications campaign in several states, and garner support from organizations who can join the Start Us Up Now coalition through the site.