We've recently started a group at Webflow to enhance our existing code review process.
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And it made me think of an older article I wrote all about the point of pull requests.

In a nutshell, pull requests aren't the same as a code review, but they are a common channel to help code reviews run smoothly.

I rewrote and added some parts of the article based on the discussions we were having as a group, and wanted to share it back on the newsletter today.

Let's dive in!
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Team-Building Exercise

I've recently been reading The Coaching Habit to help learn better tools for coaching and mentoring. I've found it to be both a 1) quick and 2) helpful read!

One bit that really stood out to me was what the author calls The Foundation Question: "What do you want?"

You can interpret that question in several ways, ranging from personal career ambitions to simply clarifying a request from a teammate. At a tactical level, one variant of this question that has helped me even in the past week is this:

"What are you trying to get out of this conversation?"

This question can be a fantastic question to help level-set what this conversation/meeting/thread is all about. As Duhigg remarks in Supercommunicators, knowing what kind of conversation you are having is the first step to having effective communication.

What does this have to do with code reviews and pull requests?

It is crucial to understand where your fellow engineers stand on their goals during a pull request. Yes, we should be striving to adopt a learning mindset, being open to giving and receiving technical feedback, etc.

But sometimes there is pressure to ship something for an incident. Sometimes there is stress for an engineer's first review. Or, hopefully, someone is looking to level up their understanding of a particular topic.

And while asking, "What are you trying to get out of this review?" might come off as insensitive, you can intuit some of this context from the description or in how they respond to feedback you give (or have asked for). It might be a good idea to reach out to the author or reviewer to discuss your goals.

• Author: "Hey, thanks for being willing to look at my pull request! I'm trying to
• Reviewer: "Thanks for the PR. I'm trying to focus on

It doesn't have to be every pull request, but having this in your toolbelt can help move a PR along when it isn't getting looked at or help progress the conversation forward if it's stuck in a loop.

Clear goals seem to do that.

Here are some more resources from me to help you build better teams!​

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The Mindful Dev Dagna is an Engineer turned Coach for ambitious professionals in Tech. She has transitioned from programming computers to reprogramming human minds. Her book Brain Refactor is a recognized Amazon bestseller, helping professionals optimize their internal programming to thrive in tech. Subscribe​

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