Zaapi - which provides digital commerce solutions for online businesses in South East Asia - used Typo to improve the review process across the teams and not overload the few reviewers.

Zaapi’s CTO, Divyanshu Negi used Typo to identify the reason behind delay in the code review process. With new engineers onboarded, there were fewer people who knew the codebase & could do reviews. Divyanshu wanted to free up the key engineers who can do more planning work and distribute the load across the team.

Problem Statement

Divyanshu’s team was expanding with new members coming in. The influx of fresh engineers meant a reduced number of individuals familiar with the codebase and capable of conducting reviews. Divyanshu’'s concern rested on comprehending the effects of these shifts on team dynamics and their task execution. He had a feeling that the seasoned members are overburdened with the review process, but he aimed to substantiate this intuition with data.

Typo’s unique insights

Using DORA research metrics, Typo indicated the team's consistent pace during this period (with low Time to Merge, akin to cycle Time). However, they merged fewer PRs overall, observed through decreasing Merge Frequency.

Divyanshu focused on feedback dynamics influencing these trends. Looking at the review depth data, it revealed that half of the code comments are coming from one engineering manager. Recognizing their time constraints, Divyanshu aimed to balance their review load while fostering broader participation in knowledge-sharing reviews, vital for the team.

Actions taken

Divyanshu shared insights with the team, emphasizing reducing the engineering manager's review workload for their well-being and planning. He conveyed the goal of involving more team members in reviews and encouraged participation regardless of seniority. The team decided to proactively address PR review requests in Slack and utilized Typo PR Slack Alerts for streamlined handling of blocked or ready-to-merge PRs.

Outcome

The engineering manager's review burden immediately dropped from 48% to 11%, enabling them to focus on valuable future planning due to their expertise. Concurrently, review depth surged successfully, with a 43% rise in total comments within 6 weeks post-change. The process also improved the review time by 47% and the remaining team was more focused on coding thus decreasing the time to the first commit by 43%.

These enhancements in feedback correlated with improved delivery. Over the same period, the team experienced a 55% rise in merge frequency.

Going forward

The team will be using Typo’s wellbeing module to understand the burnout and NPS of the team. The feedback will be used to understand the team’s engagement levels and work dynamics with peers.