Code review is a standard part of the software development process in many companies, but in many cases performing code reviews is inefficient or even illogical.
For this article, I’ll focus on only pull-request-based code reviews. With pull-request code reviews, a developer works on some code and then sends the code change to a peer for review in a pull-request. In these cases, the code under review will not be passed to the testing phase until it has been approved by the reviewer — so the pull request is blocked by the review process.
The primary objective of blocking pull-request-based code review is to prevent bad code or defects from being pushed to production. However, another important goal of any code review is knowledge sharing. The idea is that once a reviewer reads the code, they will have a better understanding of it.
When comparing different tools or processes, it’s important to consider their effectiveness in terms of both price and value. Price refers to the cost of implementing the tool and/or process, while value refers to how well the tool and/or process accomplishes its intended goal. Weighing these factors can help determine which option is ideal for your situation.