Joke about reviews

If you are in the software business, you must have heard about reviews. Reviews are an integral part of the software development process. It is said about reviews that they uncover many mistakes, many problems, and add a lot of value. Reviews can happen for a variety of documents (test plans, test cases, High level design, Low Level design, Architecture, Project Plan, Project proposals, Code reviews, the list of documents and processes that need review is as big as the number of documents in a software cycle). In a future post, I will cover reviews in more details, but right now, here is an old joke that describes in very painful terms as to why reviews are necessary.

Why we need reviews.

In an ancient monastery in a far away place, a new monk arrived to join his brothers in copying books and scrolls in the monastery's scriptorium. He was assigned as a rubricate on copies of books that had already been copied by hand.

One day, while working on the monks' Book of Vows, he asks old Father Florian, the Armarius of the Scriptorium, 'Does not the copying by hand of other copies allow for chances of error? How do we know we are not copying the mistakes of someone else? Are they ever checked against the original?'

Fr. Florian was set back a bit by the obvious logical observation of this youthful monk. 'A very good point, my son. I will take one of the latest copies of the Book of Vows down to the vault and compare it against the original.' Fr. Florian went down to the secured vault and began his verification.

A day passed and the monks began to worry and went down looking for the old priest. They were sure something may have happened. As they approached the vault they heard sobbing and wailing... they opened the door and found Fr. Florian crying over the new copy and the original, ancient Book of Vows, both opened before him on the table. It was obvious to all that the poor man had been crying his old heart out for a long time.

'What is the problem, Reverend Father???' asked one of the monks.

'Oh, my Lord,' sobbed the priest, 'The word is 'CELEBRATE'!!!' (not celibate)

And this is why we need reviews.