Code reviews are important to make sure that a standard is followed across the project by developers.  The primary advantages of having a code standard is to,

• maintain a consistent style of coding across the project
• proper commenting makes the code readable and understandable
• anyone new to the team can understand the code easily and can get to speed once he understands the coding standards.

But we need a checklist when there is a standard.  And if we have a checklist we need a process to verify the checklist.  Code review is a process where in any code written by a developer is reviewed, validated against the code standards and any deviation is pointed out and corrected before the code moves to the QC environment.  A code review could be done within the development as well as can be reviewed by developers outside of the team.  A code review not only consists of checking whether the code follows the standard but reviewers should also be looking for logical and semantic flaws.  Another key area to look for is to make sure the code is the most performance effective by making sure the logic applied is the best solution of all options.

Code review process could eat away a part of the project time and should definitely be considered during estimation.  But a lot of time can be saved if the coding standards part of the code review could be automated.  Since there are globally followed standards for every programming language if we can tell a style check system to make sure the given standard is being followed in the project, it will save a lot of time.  This check could be part of the build automation and the review reports get generated.  The IBM developerWorks article “Automation for the people: Continuous Inspection” gives an overview of tools available for code inspection.