In software development, peer review is a type of software review in which a work product (document, code, or other) is examined by the author's colleagues, in order to evaluate the work product's technical content and quality.
The purpose of a peer review is to provide "a disciplined engineering practice for detecting and correcting defects in software artifacts, and preventing their leakage into field operations" according to the Capability Maturity Model.
When performed as part of each Software development process activity, peer reviews identify problems that can be fixed early in the lifecycle.
They are also distinct from software audit reviews, which are conducted by personnel external to the project, to evaluate compliance with specifications, standards, contractual agreements, or other criteria.
In the free / open source community, something like peer review has taken place in the engineering and evaluation of computer software.