You can stop the Rubber Stamping

Rubber stamping is a code review behavior when a team is approving Pull Request (PR) without spending much time and energy over them. PRs can provide insight into development styles present in your team and one of the styles is Rubber Stamping.

Let’s first understand why Rubber Stamping happens.

1. PR review is not a focus in team and leadership does not highlight hard work done over PR reviews. In this case, the team will not spend much time on the PR review.
2. PR submission is done by a senior and the team trusts their work.
3. There is no time left and there is a need to push a PR through.

There is a need to nip it in the bud before it becomes culture.

You can observe the following and learn from it

1. If PR is opened and closed in a short period of time.
2. If there are no comments.
3. If there are no back and forth comments on PR.

You can fix this

1. Recognize PR review efforts. Encourage it and highlight it.
2. Coach team by sharing substantial review examples.
3. Watch out for large PR, it can be Rubber Stamped.
4. Ask the team to raise WIP PRs so that early comments can start flowing in.

Do I need to mention how PR reviews are beneficial in many ways?

1. PR increases knowledge.
2. It improves code quality in the team.
3. There are more chances to learn and collaborate over PR.
4. PR gives the chance to get a better solution to address a problem.

There is no downside to it.

Let’s make code review a delightful and rewarding experience.