How Long Does (Should) Code Review Take?
I recently ran polls across my social media accounts, asking people what their typical wait time for code review is.
(The polls can be found on Mastodon, LinkedIn, and X.)
I had a total of ten respondents, so fair warning that this is a very small sample size, and you can’t draw any general conclusions from it. Regardless, here they are…
The results
10 votes total
| answer | votes |
|---|---|
| 0-4 hours | 1 |
| 4-24 hours | 7 |
| 24 hours - 2 days | 2 |
| 3+ days | 0 |
The takeaways
In lieu of general conclusions, I think this could be a good opportunity to start a conversation with the different groups represented here.
So first, to the one person who typically waits for code review for only 0-4 hours (spoiler: it was Trek), that’s excellent! Fortunately, he shared a bit about how they accomplish that at his current workplace:
Our PRs are very focused, which makes reviews go quickly for sure
I have the [GitHub] Slack integration configured and consider PR reviews interrupt work to unblock people
These are both great practices that everyone should consider adopting. I know keeping code changes small has been something I frequently advocate.
To those who wait 4-24 hours: pretty good! You’re in the majority, and you’re not waiting too long. I think that’s also how long I typically have to wait for a code review. But I have to ask myself, and I ask you: how satisfied would you be if you had to wait 4+ hours for a build to pass? Doesn’t waiting for review mean a pretty big interruption in your workflow?
To the two of you who are typically waiting 24 hours - 2 days. Ouch. I feel your pain because I have been there myself. It’s frustrating, since I know how it feels to come back to the code after waiting a day for a code review and trying to reload all of that context back into memory. Have you tried to shorten your code review wait times? What has worked for you? What hasn’t?
Fortunately, no one who responded typically waits 3+ days. I’m sure there’s someone out there who does, though. I’ve been there, too. My heart goes out to you.
I genuinely want to know the answers to the questions I’ve asked above. Reach out on LinkedIn. Also, consider signing up for my email list if you’re trying to level up software delivery and operations - without a dedicated platform team. My aim is to help small- to mid-sized teams ship, monitor, and support production software like pros.