How to Get More Out of Code Review

Here at PullRequest, we consider our reviewers to be a part of your team. We have provided some quick tips for making the most of your experience with code review.

Bite-sized merge requests

While all sizes of merge request are taken and reviewed by the PullRequest reviewer community, we recommend that merge requests exceed no larger than about 800 lines of reviewable code.

Part of PullRequest's mission is to improve the overall speed and quality of your software development lifecycle. The larger a merge request is, the longer it takes to verify, make changes, validate, and eventually merge it. This is due to a larger-than-expected scope and the potential for more code churn involved after receiving the initial review and any follow-up reviews required.

Detailed change descriptions

The code author should include a detailed description that provides context for the changes involved. This context can give code reviewers more direction and understanding of the scope involved to provide more relevant comments that align with the intent of the changes being made.

Helpful contextual information can include:

• Background on why the issues/features are being fixed/implemented.

• Goals on what the changes are trying to accomplish.

• Any specific requests on what to especially focus on during the review (e.g., Please review for security, bugs, performance, etc.).

Have a conversation

Effective code review requires communication! As such, discussions within a code review comment can benefit from any of the following interactions:

• Reply or react to each comment with an emoji or comment accordingly. This ensures you have acknowledged or addressed each issue, which can provide evidence for continuing with a merge.

• Give reasons for any decisions made. For comments that are not going to be fixed, for example, explain why or indicate that there will be follow up in a later merge request.

• Ask a question. Make sure to follow up and get more details if something a reviewer said is unclear or questionable.

• Ask for advice or help in areas you are not comfortable with. Our reviewers are senior-level developers in various domain spaces and can help with wide range of topics.

Let us know what you think

The customer success team at PullRequest gets notified of every rating your team sends in for our reviewers. We actively work with our reviewers to ensure that this feedback is understood and that improvements are made. Positive or negative, provide more details so we can continue expanding efforts on the positive aspects or quickly remediate the negative aspects.

For more detailed information on how to better work with our PullRequest reviewers, see our documentation: Collaborating With PullRequest Reviewers.