https://www.morling.dev/blog/the-code-review-pyramid/

Gunnar Morling

Gunnar Morling

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[                    ]
Gunnar Morling

Gunnar Morling

Random Musings on All Things Software Engineering

  *  
  *  
  *  
  *  
  *  

  * Blog
  * Projects
  * Conferences
  * Podcasts
  * About

[                    ]
The Code Review Pyramid

Posted at Mar 10, 2022

When it comes to code reviews, it's a common phenomenon that there is
much focus and long-winded discussions around mundane aspects like
code formatting and style, whereas important aspects (does the code
change do what it is supposed to do, is it performant, is it
backwards-compatible for existing clients, and many others) tend to
get less attention.

To raise awareness for the issue and providing some guidance on
aspects to focus on, I shared a small visual on Twitter the other
day, which I called the "Code Review Pyramid". Its intention is to
help putting focus on those parts which matter the most during a code
review (in my opinion, anyways), and also which parts could and
should be automated.

As some folks asked for a permanent, referenceable location of that
resource and others wanted to have a high-res printing version, I'm
putting it here again:

code review pyramid

You can also download the visual as an SVG file.

FAQ

  * Why is it a pyramid?

    The lower parts of the pyramid should be the foundation of a code
    review and take up the most part of it.

  * Hey, that's a triangle!

    You might think so, but it's a pyramid from the side.

  * Which tool did you use for creating the drawing?

    Excalidraw.

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