In today's industry using checklist is an necessary artifact. How and why checklist gained so much of importance and is it really needed?
depending on why you need to review a code for : if reviewing code based on syntax or Symantec error you need to review the error related code without any checklists , on the other hand if reviewing is based on application testing to check the application meets the user requirements in this case you need checklist for code reviewing
Hi Syed,
The answer is that it depends on your context and your goals, i.e., what is the development environment, what kind of document are you reviewing, what kind of person is doing the review etc. Your goals refer to what you are interested in (e.g., effort, effectiveness, efficiency of the review).
Based on my experience it depends a lot on the experience of the reviewers. If you have experienced reviewers, checklists might fit well. If you have inexperienced reviewers other techniques such as perspective-based reading (PBR) might be much more appropriate. There are many empirical studies available, that might guide you to find the answer for your context. Please see some examples below.
The reason why industry often prefers or prescribes checklists is usually due to liability issues, i.e., it is necessary to follow the "state of the art" that is typically defined in some kind of standards. This does not mean that checklists are very efficient or effective compared to ad hoc reviews or other review techniques.
You should also consider that checklist-based reviews are *not* an engineering technique because you cannot evaluate if the respective process has really beed conducted (this is different to PBR for instance).
It might be also interesting for you to think about combining reviews with testing in a systematic way. This has shown good results in studies and practice. I attach a reference of a literature review about this ("a systematic mapping study") to this answer.
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Ciolkowski, M.; Differding, C.; Laitenberger, O.; Münch, J.
Empirical investigation of perspective-based reading
A replicated experiment
http://publica.fraunhofer.de/eprints/urn:nbn:de:0011-px-463090.pdf
Frank Elberzhager, Jürgen Münch, Vi Tran Ngoc Nha. A systematic mapping study on the combination of static and dynamic quality assurance techniques. Information and Software Technology, 54(1):1 – 15, 2012.
http://www.sserg.org/publications/uploads/10eeb9332558b598ddac4538b04eaa5171f79b7a.pdf
Porter, A. A. and Votta, L. (1998).Comparing Detection Methods forSoftware Requirements Inspection: AReplication using Professional Subjects.
Journal of Empirical Software Engineering,
vol. 3, no. 4, page 355-378
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0909.4260.pdf
http://de.scribd.com/doc/82098669/Comparative-Study-of-the-Effectiveness-of-Ad-Hoc-Checklist-and-Perspective-based-Software-Inspection-Reading-Techniques
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