Use Case: The Impact of Slow Code Reviews in a Development Team

Scenario

A team member, let's call them Chris, has been consistently slow in completing code reviews.
While Chris is thorough and thoughtful, their extended review times are causing bottlenecks in the development process. Pull requests (PRs) often sit for days waiting for Chris's feedback, delaying the merging of critical features and bug fixes. This delay has started affecting the overall velocity of the team.

Impact on the Team

  • Delayed Feature Releases: When code reviews take too long, the development process slows down, leading to delayed feature releases. Even small delays in reviewing can push back the timeline for delivering new functionalities, which impacts the team's ability to meet deadlines and satisfy stakeholders' expectations.
  • Reduced Developer Efficiency:Developers submitting PRs are forced to wait for feedback, stalling their progress on other tasks. Without timely reviews, developers often need to revisit code they wrote days earlier, which interrupts their workflow and makes it harder to stay productive. This also adds cognitive load, as developers have to re-familiarize themselves with the context of the code after long delays.
  • Blocked Collaboration:In agile teams, quick feedback loops are essential for continuous improvement and collaboration. When a single team member slows down code reviews, it can lead to frustration and discourage collaboration, especially when other developers feel they are waiting unnecessarily. This bottleneck can negatively impact team morale and cohesion over time.
  • Accumulation of Technical Debt:Slow code reviews can result in longer-lived branches that increase the risk of conflicts and integration issues. The longer code sits unreviewed, the more it can drift from the main branch, leading to complex merges or outdated code that requires rework. This contributes to technical debt and makes the codebase harder to maintain.

Consequences of Inaction

If this issue isn’t addressed, the team’s efficiency and ability to deliver quality work on time will suffer. Over time, the frustration of dealing with delays may lead to disengagement, as developers feel their contributions are not valued or are unnecessarily held back. The overall velocity of the team will drop, and deadlines may be missed more frequently, resulting in loss of trust from stakeholders and potentially affecting the team’s reputation