“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.
Code reviews are industry standard in software development, used in many organisations, 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 refactoring, 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 the biggest obstacles are, and how to overcome them.
Learn more about Dragan at 
/ 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 Talk LeSS 2024 Conference Summary
Previous episodes mentioned during the conversation:
- The interview with Woody Zuill:
• Get Agile #8 I Mob Programming I Woody Zuill - The interview Tim Ottinger: • Get Agile #29 |Why Agile Teams Need Extreme Programming Practices? | Tim Ottinger
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 / @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)
