3 Ways That Remote Teams Make Code Review Work Across Multiple Timezones

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“A code review is a synchronization point among different team members and thus has the potential to block progress,” wrote Palantir engineer Robert Fink on their engineering blog. Code review can become a bottleneck if it doesn’t happen promptly—at Palantir, “on the order of hours, not days”—that prevents code from shipping.

That’s what makes code review such a challenge for remote teams, especially those split across multiple timezones. Remote teams tend to rely on asynchronous communication and workflows, because team members aren’t necessarily online at the same time. They often need to design for the inability of reviewers to promptly unblock fellow engineers by providing a code review.

We talked with several remote teams, and they shared with us three lessons that they learned in designing code review processes that work for teams with minimal or no timezone overlap at all.

What Belongs in an Effective Code Review Checklist?

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As engineering teams become more established, the need to formalize a code review process becomes more important. At PullRequest, we’ve observed time and time again one of the most frequented formalization practices is to compose a code review checklist that can be applied to every pull request that’s opened by the team.

However, for checklists to be effective, teams need to use them consistently and comprehensively with each code review. That imposition can make checklists controversial, especially within engineering teams that resist process.

So, what separates the good code review checklists from ineffective ones?

4 Benefits of Outsourcing Your Code Review

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If you want to write clean, maintainable code, you need code review.

Automated tests and quality assurance (QA) can catch defects and edge cases, but only a second pair of qualified eyes can make sure the design and logic of your code are going to work long-term.

To keep the product development cycle moving faster, and reduce the amount of technical debt they create, more companies are turning to outsourced code review. Outsourced code review is scalable to your needs and your schedule. You can receive an evaluation quickly from developers with expertise in many different technologies.

If you’re considering outsourcing your code review, here are four benefits you should be aware of.

Giving Back Through Code Review

Every June, Google celebrates GoogleServe—a month-long campaign to encourage Googlers to volunteer in their communities. This year, PullRequest worked with the Google.org team to sign up 50 Googlers across 14 offices to provide code review to nonprofit projects, like the Wikimedia Commons Android app and Techtonica’s tech training curriculum for women and non-binary adults.

Code Reviewer Spotlight: Eli Perelman

A passion for contributing to open source projects is one of the most common traits we see in PullRequest code reviewers. Eli Perelman has dedicated his programming career to helping other developers through open source. Now, as a PullRequest code reviewer, Eli applies his commitment to improving the experience of other developers to reviewing code for other teams.

This Code Reviewer Spotlight is part of an ongoing series of interviews where we ask our top reviewers the following seven questions so you can get to know them. Below, discover how Eli sees being a reviewer as another a way to improve the experiences of other developers.