Get Agile #31 | The hidden costs of async code reviews | Dragan Stepanovic

"No one wants to review PR that took one week or more to develop," says Dragan Stepanovic, Principal Engineer who helps companies and teams evolve their engineering culture.

In this episode of the Get Agile Podcast, Tomasz Wykowski from Procognita meets with Dragan to deep dive into the unrealized consequences of async code reviews. Dragan shows how developers are often forced to work in isolation and instead of forming one team, they become N teams of one person. Often with different engineering culture and coding practices.

Code reviews are industry standard in software development, used in many organizations, but most of them aren't aware of the hidden costs. As Dragan explains, on one hand engineers prefer small pull requests, which lead to a faster feedback loop, better code quality, a higher likelihood of refactor, and more engagement. On the other hand, small changes generate more waiting time. As a consequence, developers end up with large peer reviews, which are often performed in a rush. "Never had a big PR that didn't look good to me" says Dragan.

They look into alternative approaches, called 'co-creation patterns', reducing transaction costs by letting developers work together. Dragan explains how to start, what are the biggest obstacles, and how to overcome them.

Learn more about Dragan at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dstepanovic/. You can find his article about async code reviews at InfoQ https://www.infoq.com/articles/co-creation-patterns-software-development/

The recordings from the Talk LeSS conference 2024 can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgo9ei2yBfg&list=PLDriDdQlN4CoRscWikngnMB0wNebK6cx9&pp=gAQB

Previous episodes mentioned during the conversation:

• The interview with Woody Zuill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC3XMPWV5H4&list=PLDriDdQlN4Coumio-67kxTkjeouqn7m64
• The interview Tim Ottinger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkiSCLeSSak&list=PLDriDdQlN4Coumio-67kxTkjeouqn7m64

Other resources mentioned in the conversation:

• Woody Zuill book: https://www.amazon.com/Software-Teaming-Programming-Whole-Team-Approach/dp/B0BLG1QTYK/
• Mob Mentality Show by Chris Lucian and Austin Chadwick https://www.youtube.com/@mobmentalityshow and their two Trello boards (Software Profession Resources: https://trello.com/b/1lfMkCOh/software-profession-resources, Companies that Mob/Ensemble Program https://trello.com/b/EFSFnE4W/companies-that-mob-ensemble-program)