This book was self-published by Smart Bear Software which produces "Code Collaborator" and other developer tools. My expectation was that it'd be a 164 page sales pitch for Smart Bear's products. I was wrong.

While there is an essay (the last!) detailing how their product "Code Collaborator" implements the ideas and principles discussed in the preceding essays and on occasion mention it in the earlier essays, the majority of the book is devoted to essays discussing code review.

They discuss what it is, why code reviews should be performed, some techniques for doing effective code reviews, and throughout use hard numbers collected from studies they performed at a couple of large developer shops.

I found the subject material interesting and one of the essays towards the end had information useful to me in my current career. The essays are generally clear and understandable but have a dry style which may make it difficult for some readers to continue reading despite the usefulness of the material. ( )

The book should really have been called a 'whitepaper' from the start, because that's what it is: an analysis of code review processes, leading to conclude that Smart Bear's software is the optimal solution available. The book also lacks a decent disclosure of its connection with the software manufacturer at the start.

Having said that, the book isn't bad as a whole. It summarizes several studies on the effects of code reviews, including the authoring firm's own on their lightweight approach. There's a decent amount of data to chew through, presented usually in an understandable manner. Conclusions are rather honest, with a slight nudge towards the company's preferred approach.

The writing is most of the time mediocre and editing missed a couple of errors. ( )

Some good, widely acknowledged software engineering practices are mentioned in this book, but it's mostly an ad for the company's products.

The thrust of the book is the gap between knowing good practices and implementing them. The author advocates using tools that automatically handle engineering and metric tasks, without relying on the programmers. Good philosophy. ( )