Code reviews should be part of the software engineering team process regardless of the development model. Furthermore, the team should learn to execute reviews in a timely manner. Pull requests (PRs) left hanging can cause additional merge problems and go stale resulting in lost work. Qualified PRs are expected to reflect well-defined, concise tasks, and thus be compact in content. Reviewing a single task should then take relatively little time to complete.
To ensure that the code review process is healthy and meets the goals stated above, consider following these guidelines:
- Although modern DevOps environments incorporate tools for managing PRs, it can be useful to label tasks pending for review or to have a dedicated place for them on the task board - Customize AzDO task boards
- In the daily standup meeting check tasks pending for review and make sure they have reviewers assigned.
- Junior teams and teams new to the process can consider creating separate tasks for reviews together with the tasks themselves.
- Utilize tools to streamline the review process - Code review tools
Further resources can be found in the resource section on the main page.