VSTS Code Review Tools Evaluation

In early February I gave a presentation on Code Review Tools in Team System. During that event we recorded a group evaluation on various aspects of the tools. I am finally publishing those results. The evaluation was relatively simple, I demonstrated the product and then asked the group if the tool supported various aspects that are beneficial to code reviews, and recored that as a simple Yes or No.

As you can see, the Out-of-the-box guidelines had the worst combined score, with the Yell method, and the CRMail offering doing a little better but each scoring fairly low on our evaluation. TFS Code Review Workflow and Attrice's Code Review Sidekick fared better, with TeamReview having the highest approval rating of the available code review tools for Team System.

Evaluation Form - Code Reviews in Visual Studio Team System 

Presented by JB Brown and the .Net Developers Association, Feb 9, 2009 - Redmond Wa.

Supports..	OOB	Yell	CRMail	TFS Workflow	Attrice	TeamReview
Updates to the project (project is active)	Y	Y	N/A	N	Y	Y
Workflow	N	N	N	Y	N	Y
Conversation	N	Y	N	N	N	Y
Good, Fast, Clear, Objective Feedback	N	Y	N	Y	N	Y
Clear outcomes	N	Y	N	Y	N	Y
Identifying and managing the bad things..	N	N	N	N	N	N
Sharing Tacit Domain-Based Knowledge	N	Y	N	N	N	Y
Distributed teams, different time-zones	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y
Team Members without Visual Studio	N	Y	Y	N	Y	N
First class member of ALM	N	N	N	Y	N	Y
Low TCO	N	Y	Y	N	Y	Y
Auditing, reporting, trending	N	N	N	Y	N	Y
VSTS 2005	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
VSTS 2008	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
VSTS 2010	Y	Y	Y	N	?	Y
Developer Joy	N	N	N	N	Y	Y
Creating Business Value via Code Reviews with VSTS	N	N	N	y	Y	Y