- Code review: It will cycle through members in a channel for code reviews of pull requests
- Andon: It also allows members of a channel to pull a virtual andon cord in order to call for help from teammates. Learn more about this experiment here
Previously, we tagged teammates in slack to review our pull requests based on who was available or who was familiar with the feature or area of the codebase. However, this created silos of knowledge, which we wanted to avoid. To address this issue, we decided to experiment with creating a slackbot that would cycle through developers on the team who would then conduct the code review.
The experiment was a success! With this simple tool we were sharing knowledge better across our development teams. Based on our observations, the natural tendency for developers is to have people review pull requests who are already familiar with the area of code being worked on. However, with this experiment, we were able to put a system in place to help avoid this scenario. Instead, by expanding who was doing the review we expanded the opportunity for feedback from fresh eyes on the team. Additionally, it forced the spread of knowledge on the team because if someone didn't understand something then the owner of the pull request had to explain it in order to get it approved.
You can find a thorough write up on this experiment here