42% “efficient”

Suppose a team of coders work on a project, and we say we want code reviews, or maybe inspections. We have estimates for how long various parts will take to code -- adding up to 3 engineer-weeks, say. How much effort (engineer-days) should we allocate to cover code reviews, discussion and rework?

Well, that depends of course on how much time we think it will take to review and discuss and rework the code. Let's suppose for a moment that if my colleague spends a week coding and doing some basic testing, then I will stare at the code for two days. Actually, let's say there are two reviewers, so two of us will stare at the code for two days each.

Then we have a day where three of us meet (in the morning, say) and talk about the code for a while. After 1½ or 2 hours, we go back to our desks and think some more about what we heard, and the person who wrote the code makes some changes. We repeat that but at the end of the day we're all happy with the code.

As I write this, that seems like a lot of review time, but if we do it that way, the total engineer-days spent add up thus:

• 5 engr-days coding
• 4 engr-days reviewing (2 reviewers @ 2 days each)
• 3 engr-days discussion and rework (3 participants @ 1 day each)

Twelve (12) days total, for a thing whose coding estimate was 5 days.

That works out to 5/12 ≈ 42%. In other words, if you have 10 engineer-days available, then at the above rates of "overhead" you can spend only 4.2 days coding; the rest is review, discussion, rework. That doesn't include integration or system test, etc.

Perhaps I have the wrong ratio of (review + discussion + rework) to (code and basic test), but I'll confess to being surprised at the result of 42% given the above.