Case Study: Mentor Graphics achieves faster, higher-quality code reviews with SmartBear Collaborator

SmartBear Collaborator Identifies Issues Early in Development Cycle to Enable Reduction of Application Repair Costs

Mentor Graphics, a leading Oregon‑based electronic hardware and software company, needed a better way to run and document code reviews for its Xpedition Enterprise PCB design team of about 200 engineers spread across eight locations. Informal, hard‑to‑schedule reviews were slowing Agile adoption and making it difficult to capture feedback centrally, so the Operations team sought a tool that would let developers run reviews on their own schedules and track comments and actions in a central repository.

They implemented SmartBear Collaborator, a quick‑to‑install code‑review platform that supports other project artifacts and provides a central audit trail. The tool increased adoption of code review best practices (with daily use by core developers), enabled simultaneous, asynchronous discussion and queuing of reviews, and helped the team find more issues earlier in the cycle—reducing downstream repair costs and making code review part of every change.

Mentor Graphics

Jim Thompson

Operations Manager