Your team members resist participating in code reviews. How can you turn their reluctance into collaboration?

Turning reluctance toward code reviews into collaboration requires understanding and addressing team concerns. Here’s what’s worked for me: Lead by Example: I actively participate in code reviews, showing how to give and receive feedback constructively. This helps make the process feel natural and important. Establish Guidelines: Clear guidelines on conducting reviews—what to focus on, how to provide feedback and the right tone—make it less intimidating and more structured. Share Responsibility: I ask every engineer to allocate 30 mins to perform the review. This fosters a sense of shared ownership. Encourage Pair Programming: Pair programming offers real-time feedback, making it a more comfortable, collaborative alternative. It works!

𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗕𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀: Highlight learning opportunities and code quality improvements. 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗜𝘁 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲: Foster a positive, non-judgmental review environment. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗦𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗹: Begin with brief, focused reviews to ease participation. 𝗥𝗼𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗥𝗼𝗹𝗲𝘀: Involve everyone by alternating reviewer responsibilities. 𝗖𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗯𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: Acknowledge valuable feedback to motivate active involvement.

In code reviews, the reviewer must always have the complete understanding of the current system and the impacted flows. Though this skill usually grows linearly with the experience he grew in the organisation, providing right comments in the commits reduces the reluctance of the team. We have to respect the code the developer gave + we need to emphasize the necessity of the changes and the impact it brings to help him grow his/her skills.

Understanding the teams pain points is crucial towards resolving the reluctance. It could be that members view reviews and corrections as personal attack, which could be reflective of team culture, in which case it needs fixing. Highlighting we work together to solve problems and not individually is needed. Other reasons could be inefficient codes altogether or even unstandardized codes or even no comments which make the review harder.

I’ve seen in my own career that code reviews can be a stepping stone to become a team leader and show your talents. When you are reviewing other developer’s work, it’s a stage for you to show your deeper understanding and intelligence. People who are above you will learn to respect someone who points out something beyond their sight. This is your opportunity to move up the ladder and to be seen.

Code reviews offer several crucial benefits, making them a necessary, if not mandatory, practice: 1. Code reviews ensure that more than one person understands the code, fostering collective ownership and facilitating knowledge transfer within the team. 2. They provide a chance for coder to learn and improve, ensuring the code meets the organization's quality standards. 3. Even minor mistakes can lead to significant bugs. Code reviews serve as an essential practice to catch these issues before they reach production. These reasons alone should motivate developers to participate in code reviews. However, organizations should consider implementing PR merge blockers to ensure that code is reviewed by at least one person before being merged.

It is always better to have a third person reviewing your code as we have multiple staging environments for an application. Each Person brings different lenses to the problem so that it can be sorted out in the best way possible. The whole idea is not to judge the developer's knowledge, but to create exceptional user /client experience

In a previous project, one of my teams was initially hesitant to participate in code reviews. To address this, we introduced a "round-robin" system where everyone had a turn at both reviewing and having their code reviewed. We also integrated pair programming sessions where two team members would review code together, turning it into a collaborative learning experience. Over time, this approach transformed code reviews from a dreaded task into a valued part of our workflow. Team members began to see the benefits of shared insights, and the overall quality of our code improved significantly.

From experience, colleagues who were hesitant to partake in code reviews found them as an inefficient use of time while others hesitated due to intimidation by colleagues. Defining clear guidelines for reviews, focused on facets like functionality, readability and adherence to conventional standards and practices was a good approach that turned the reluctance into collaboration. Automated routine checks were put in place to reduce manual effort as much as possible and time limits were set for the reviews to prevent them from being unnecessarily lengthy and burdensome. Simplifying the process, making expectations clear, shortening the time involved and adopting pair-coding and reviews, made reluctant team members willing to participate.

Automate tools and processes so that they can reduce efforts. Set clear expectations and rules in the system itself (not in the documents) Establish a daily code review rotation system for all team members.

For developing a sense complete product ownership instead of project or a module is key to encourage team members to proactively participate in code reviews. When they start thing about complete product success then they will start looking out complete product code.

Provide Training and Support Offer Training Sessions: Provide training on how to conduct effective code reviews and how to give and receive constructive feedback. Pair Programming: Encourage pair programming sessions where team members can work together on code and naturally review each other’s work in real-time, building trust and familiarity with each other’s coding styles.

To ensure a smooth onboarding, conduct initial group code review sessions facilitated by a senior team member to introduce processes and tools. Subsequently, gradually shift towards individual code reviews.