Case Study: Cisco achieves efficient, scalable distributed code reviews with SmartBear Collaborator

Cisco Improves Software Team Communications with Collaborator

Cisco Systems, a global leader in networking and provider of products like Unified MeetingPlace, needed a practical way to meet an engineering-wide mandate to perform code review for every bug fix. A five‑person, geographically distributed team wanted to improve defect detection, speed and simplify the review process, enable asynchronous collaboration across time zones, and avoid the overhead of manual diffs and meetings.

They adopted SmartBear Collaborator, which provides before/after diffs, inline comments, threaded discussions, and integration with Perforce and Cisco’s defect-tracking system to automate packaging and attachments. Adoption overcame initial resistance, enabling reviews for every bug fix, reducing manual work, and improving code quality; Cisco and SmartBear also produced a large study covering 2,500 reviews of 3.2 million lines of code that validated the approach.

Cisco

Brandon Fuller

Manger, Software Development