4 tips to jump the PR review queue

Are you tired of waiting for your colleagues to review your pull requests? Here are some quick tips to help your PRs filter to the top of the proverbial review queue.

  1. Short and sweet — Nobody likes reviewing long PRs. It might not be fair, but ten 10-line pull requests will generally get reviewed faster than a single 100-line pull request.
  2. Limit scope — One of the surest ways to confuse someone reading your change set is to mix concerns. Keep each PR focused on a single thing. One feature addition, one bug fix, or one refactor per PR!
  3. A good title — Give your PR a meaningful and accurate title. “Bugfix” doesn’t cut it. If someone has to divine the reason for your PR from the code, it’s a bad PR, and cognitive load (and thus wait times) go up!
  4. A good description — Link to any relevant issues, stories, or other related changes in the description. If there’s anything at all unclear about your changes, explain it. Don’t make your reviewer guess, or leave a comment asking for basic information.
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