Feedback Ladders How We Encode Code Reviews at Netlify - Leslie Cohn-Wein, Kristen Lavavej & swyx

This resource first appeared in issue #15 on 20 Mar 2020 and has tags Technical Leadership: Software Development, Technical Leadership: Code Reviews

Feedback Ladders: How We Encode Code Reviews at Netlify - Leslie Cohn-Wein, Kristen Lavavej & swyx

We had several links about code reviews and the importance of clarity around expectations two weeks ago; in this post, authors from Netlify describe a simple, emoji-encoded 5-level scheme for communicating how urgent and important the code review recommendations are. It’s kind of the code review equivalent of the paper referee’s Reject/Resubmit after Major Revisions/Accepted Pending Minor Revisions/Accepted rubric.

Read the article for the details, but the levels are:

  • ⛰ - Mountain - blocking and requires immediate action
  • 🧗‍♀️ - Boulder - blocking
  • ⚪️ - Pebble - non-blocking but requires future action
  • ⏳- Sand - requires future consideration
  • 🌫 - Dust - take it or leave it

This is the system for their UX team, so it’s mostly about design, but it seems like a useful way to communicate the strength of reviewers recommendations while also keeping them honest - if absolutely every problem they see is a mountain or a boulder, well, then, maybe they see too many mountains and boulders.

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