Get Agile #31 | The hidden costs of async code reviews | Dragan Stepanovic
Release Date: 03/07/2025
Get Agile #31 | The hidden costs of async code reviews | Dragan Stepanovic
Get Agile Podcast
“No one wants to review PR that took one week or more to develop,” says Dragan Stepanovic, Principal Engineer who helps companies and teams evolve their engineering culture. In this episode of the Get Agile Podcast, Tomasz Wykowski from Procognita meets with Dragan to deep dive into the unrealized consequences of async code reviews. Dragan shows how developers are often forced to work in isolation and instead of forming one team, they become N teams of one person. Often with different engineering culture and coding practices. Code reviews are industry standard in software development, used...
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Get Agile #30 | How do you get people to collaborate? | Jim Benson
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"The longer you put off talking to your colleagues, the more likely it is, that you're going to have integration problems", says Jim Benson in his conversation with Tomasz Wykowski. They start their conversation with The Collaboration Equation, which is “Individuals x Teams = Value. Jim explains that teams are covered by the Agile movement, and Value is discussed in Lean, but the individuals are somehow forgotten - the way they interact, work with each other, help each other, monitor their work, and are self-aware of what they lend to the team and what they gain from it. Jim defines...
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Get Agile #29 | Why Agile Teams Need Extreme Programming Practices? | Tim Ottinger
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“CI is developers' behavior, it has nothing to do with running Jenkins,” says Tim Ottinger, XP coach from Industrial Logic. Join Tomasz Wykowski, from ProCognita as he interviews Tim Ottinger about the ongoing relevance of Extreme Programming in modern software development. They look at the state of different XP practices, including TDD, CI/CD, User Stories, Swarming, Pairing, and Teaming. Tim explains why these behaviors are necessary for teams to iteratively develop product, and how they differ from “solo ticket processing” commonly used in software development. Tim...
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Get Agile #28 | Designing organization with Org Topologies | Alexey Krivitsky
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Join Tomasz Wykowski from ProCognita as he sits down with Alexey Kryvitsky, Certified Scrum Trainer, Certified LeSS Trainer, and co-creator of Org Topologies. Together they discuss how to avoid making the implementation of the Agile framework as an organizational goal. Alexey introduces the concept of Org Topologies as a mapping technique to help companies discover where they are, where they want to be, and how to get there. He discusses two dimensions of the map, which are the scope of capabilities and the scope of work. Then he explains each of the four levels on both axis. They...
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Get Agile #27 | Intent-Based Leadership | Jenni Jepsen
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Intent-Based Leadership is a way of leading when we give control based on technical competencies and organizational clarity. Created by David Marquet, author of “Turn the Ship Around” it was popularized in the Agile community by Jenni Jepsen. Tomasz Wykowski from ProCognita interviews Jenni, on why Intent-Based Leadership works, and how to apply it. Jenni starts with David’s story on how he learned that one man cannot think for the whole submarine crew. She explains the main concept of Intent-Based Leadership, which is to give intent and take actions, rather than ask for permission and...
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Get Agile #26 | How to start LeSS adoption? | Viktor Grgic
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“You need to make a distinction between which direction you’re going and what you’re going to do as a first step,” says Viktor Grgic, Certified LeSS Trainer. In this episode of the Get Agile podcast Tomasz Wykowski from ProCognita talks with Viktor about his approach to LeSS transformations. He shares his experience in finding people responsible for organizational structure, with whom he starts conversations on the identification of the problems to solve, not the symptoms to address. Victor explains how he educates decision-makers on the root causes of the current situation and...
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Get Agile #25 | Leadership Agility for better decision making | Pete Behrens
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Tomasz Wykowski from ProCognita meets with Pete Behrens, a Leadership Coach and Founder of the Agile Leadership Journey (ALJ), a community devoted to improving leaders and their organizations. Together they discuss how the Agile Leadership Journey provides its members with a pragmatic approach to leadership and how leaders can think, behave, and make better decisions using different models from ALJ. “There’s no better or worse, there’s more awareness and choice,” says Pete, explaining the Leadership Agility model. He describes three main stages of self-awareness as a leader: Expert,...
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Get Agile #24 | The Leadership Shift | Zuzi Sochova
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“Leadership is a state of mind, so everyone is a leader,” says Zuzi Sohova, Certified Scrum Trainer in her conversation with Tomasz Wykowski from ProCognita. Together they discuss the role of a leader in modern organizations and how they need to change from the position of power to the position of influence. Zuzi shares her story of becoming Scrum Master, what was her greatest challenge, and the biggest change she needed to make. She tells how coaching helped her on her path and how she now works with executives to help them find their dreams. They also discuss how confidence and courage...
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Get Agile #23 | Making Reliable Promises | Angel Diaz-Maroto
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How often your organization fails to deliver on the promise? How many deadlines were not met, or the goals not achieved? "The biggest responsibility of leadership is to ensure that promises keep on working on time," says Angel Diaz-Maroto, Certified Enterprise Coach, and Certified Scrum Trainer. During his recent visit to Warsaw, Poland, he joined Tomasz Wykowski from ProCognita to discuss the elements of reliable promises. Together, they look at building promises in a dynamic, agile environment, and how to create these on task, output, and outcome levels. Angel explains how reliable promises...
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Get Agile #22 | Personal Agility | Peter Stevens
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“Time is your most valuable currency,” says Peter Stevens, co-author of the “Personal Agility” book. “How you choose to spend this currency says a lot about what you care about.” In this episode of the Get Agile Podcast, Peter joins Tomasz Wykowski from ProCognita to discover the patterns behind Personal Agility. Peter explains how to discover things that really matter and how to navigate between them. He shows why it’s not a process to follow, but a set of patterns, and what are the six powerful questions to ask during the “celebrate and choose” event. They also discuss what...
info_outline“No one wants to review PR that took one week or more to develop,” says Dragan Stepanovic, Principal Engineer who helps companies and teams evolve their engineering culture.
In this episode of the Get Agile Podcast, Tomasz Wykowski from Procognita meets with Dragan to deep dive into the unrealized consequences of async code reviews. Dragan shows how developers are often forced to work in isolation and instead of forming one team, they become N teams of one person. Often with different engineering culture and coding practices.
Code reviews are industry standard in software development, used in many organizations, but most of them aren’t aware of the hidden costs. As Dragan explains, on one hand engineers prefer small pull requests, which lead to a faster feedback loop, better code quality, a higher likelihood of refactor, and more engagement. On the other hand, small changes generate more waiting time. As a consequence, developers end up with large peer reviews, which are often performed in a rush. “Never had a big PR that didn’t look good to me” says Dragan.
They look into alternative approaches, called ‘co-creation patterns’, reducing transaction costs by letting developers work together. Dragan explains how to start, what are the biggest obstacles, and how to overcome them.
Learn more about Dragan at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dstepanovic/. You can find his article about async code reviews at InfoQ https://www.infoq.com/articles/co-creation-patterns-software-development/
The recordings from the Talk LeSS conference 2024 can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgo9ei2yBfg&list=PLDriDdQlN4CoRscWikngnMB0wNebK6cx9&pp=gAQB
Previous episodes mentioned during the conversation:
- The interview with Woody Zuill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC3XMPWV5H4&list=PLDriDdQlN4Coumio-67kxTkjeouqn7m64
- The interview Tim Ottinger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkiSCLeSSak&list=PLDriDdQlN4Coumio-67kxTkjeouqn7m64
Other resources mentioned in the conversation:
- Woody Zuill book: https://www.amazon.com/Software-Teaming-Programming-Whole-Team-Approach/dp/B0BLG1QTYK/
- Mob Mentality Show by Chris Lucian and Austin Chadwick https://www.youtube.com/@mobmentalityshow and their two Trello boards (Software Profession Resources: https://trello.com/b/1lfMkCOh/software-profession-resources, Companies that Mob/Ensemble Program https://trello.com/b/EFSFnE4W/companies-that-mob-ensemble-program)