Mob Code Review (Mob CR): A Collaborative Approach to Improving Code Quality

Mob CR (Mob Code Review) is a collaborative code review method inspired by Mob Programming, aimed at establishing shared code quality standards, educating new members, and aligning team understanding.

It is suitable for teams lacking unified code quality perception, such as newly formed teams, teams with many newcomers, or those that have not performed code reviews for a long time.

Goals

Quickly set or rebuild team standards for code quality.

Educate new members.

Assess team members' awareness of code quality.

Process (Five Steps)

Identify a code segment (400‑600 lines, up to 1500 lines if familiar).

Individual review: each participant reviews the code independently and marks issues.

Select a facilitator (experienced reviewer) and schedule the session.

Conduct the Mob CR: the facilitator leads a collective discussion of all comments, resolves disagreements, and reaches conclusions.

Code cleanup: assign one person to refactor the code according to the conclusions and merge it.

The review focuses on four layers: automated scans, basic coding standards, design/implementation considerations, and potential better solutions. While finding bugs is nice to have, the primary aim is improving overall code quality, readability, and maintainability.

Example

A recent Mob CR involved 6 files, 1529 lines, and 130 prior review comments, taking four hours for the formal session.

发现的主要设计问题如下：
老司机指出，对于其中一个配置文件，如果用 protobuf 把配置定义清楚，直接交给不同的语言去 unserialize， 要比使用没有 schema 的 yaml 格式文件要好得多得多。

Recommendations include using protobuf for configuration files and following Google’s API design guidelines for resource‑oriented APIs.