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Elite teams ship code in under a day. Others wait a week for reviews. The difference isn't discipline—it's visibility.

Plug in your numbers. See what the math says for your team.

What does your typical review wait time cost?

## The real cost of waiting

One reply laid it out clearly:

> "Any wait is bad and costs money in all sorts of ways—context switching, merge conflicts, finding out about bugs a week later instead of 15 minutes after writing it."

The original poster described what this looks like in practice:

> "I am faster than my other team mates, so my MRs in this team pile up like train cars... I actually just avoid picking up new tasks to avoid context overload because I need to wrap up what's pending."

Read that again. A developer is *intentionally slowing down* because the review process can't keep up. They're managing their own throughput to compensate for a broken system.

Another response connected it to broader research:

> "It's a major problem, for many organizations, and it pays to solve it (refer: 'Accelerate' by Dr. Forsgren)."

[The Accelerate - research](https://itrevolution.com/product/accelerate/) shows elite teams achieve lead times—from commit to production—measured in hours, not weeks. If your reviews alone take 3-4 days, you've already blown past what high performers accomplish end-to-end.

---

## What high-performing teams actually do

The thread surfaced several patterns from teams that have solved this:

**They treat reviews as blockers, not backlog**

> "PRs should be treated as blockers and dealt with ASAP."

> "In the best teams I've been a part of, the guideline was to start the day by reviewing any pending MR, before producing any additional code."

**They have explicit time agreements**

> "We have a 24 hour turn around time expectation for most code reviews."

> "I expect 24 hour turnaround per iteration from required reviewers... 24 hours is when pings start going out."

> "Four hours, tops. Then I start DMing people for the review."

**They keep changes small and reviewable**

> "I learned to pair down my commit sizes. Now my commits are less than 100 lines. They are so small that when I ask for reviews, people readily look at my PRs because they know the PR will be easy to review. I routinely get reviews done same day now."

> "We review all changes within a day. Though we keep our tickets and changes small so they are easy to read through and understand."

**They make reviews part of the job, not an interruption**

> "We do same day code reviews for all merge requests, with the goal to do them within an hour of being submitted. We all have to have our code merged, so it's really just like we need it done by other people as much as we need it done so it basically averages out."

---

## Why nothing changes

The most honest observation in the thread:

> "The situation is surreal, but it's also disturbingly normal and organizations tend to be very slow to move off their broken process no matter how large the evidence that it works badly."

Teams know long reviews hurt. Many have read Accelerate. They've felt the pain of context-switching back to week-old code. But the process persists because no one can see it clearly:

1. **No visibility** — Without data, "reviews are slow" is just a feeling, easily dismissed.

2. **No baseline** — What's normal for your team? Is this sprint worse than last sprint? Without knowing your baseline, you can't know.

3. **No accountability** — A 24-hour agreement means nothing if no one can tell when it's been violated.

The original poster captured the dysfunction perfectly:

> "Teams putting processes before people and then claiming to do agile."

---

## You can't fix what you can't see
*Your reviews take exactly as long as the system you've designed allows.*

Reviews aren't slow because developers are lazy. You designed the system work flows through. It's yours to redesign. But like any debugging, it starts with visibility.

When a deploy fails, you don't guess at the cause. You look at the logs. You trace the error. You find the line that broke.
Your review process deserves the same treatment:

- How long do items actually sit in review?
- Which transitions are slow?
-   Dev done → In Review?
-   In Review → Review done?
-   Review done → In Test?
- Is the 24-hour agreement being met?

These questions are all easy to answer—if you have the data.

The developer who started the thread isn't unreasonable for expecting same-day reviews. They're just on a team that's never seen where the time actually goes.

---

## Making it work without breaking flow
The common objection is that fast reviews mean constant interruptions. But the best advice flips this:

> "When you start a work period, do reviews first, then go to coding. When you come in in the morning, get your cup of coffee, and then do reviews. Once reviews are done, start coding. When you come back from lunch, do any pending reviews, then get back to coding. No interruptions, no leaving the state of flow."

Another pattern:
> "Code in small batches, and when you're done a batch of coding, reviewing other people's code is higher priority than the next batch of coding."

Reviews don't break flow if you design them as transitions, not interruptions. But you won't know if it's working until you can measure it.

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The 3-Day Code Review Problem (And Why You Can't Fix What You Can't See)

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Every missed deadline has a cause. Every blown estimate has a reason. 

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We'd been underestimating integrations for 18 months. It was obvious once we could finally see it.

How Many Sprints Before You Spot the Pattern?

When stakeholders push for aggressive timelines, you feel the risk. 

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You Know It's a Bad Estimate. But Can You Prove It?

Two 5-point stories. One takes 2 days, the other takes 2 weeks. Your team estimated them the same—but something made them wildly different. 

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Same Story Points. Different Outcomes. Why?

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You Run Planning Poker Every Sprint. What Happens to That Data?

Stakeholders add urgent work mid-sprint. You know it hurts delivery—but without concrete data, you can't quantify the damage or push back effectively.

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How Much Did That 'Quick Request' Actually Cost?

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_"We went from 'probably next month' to '85% confidence by March 15th.' Leadership finally trusts our timelines."_

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Your Team Estimates. But Can You Actually Predict?

Issues sit in "In Review" for days. Blockers hide in "Waiting for Info" for weeks. 

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Where Does Your Team's Time Actually Go?

Every retrospective, the same question: _"Why didn't we finish?"_ Without time-in-status data, you're debating opinions instead of analyzing facts.

_"Turns out our bottleneck wasn't development—it was code review. We never would have known without the data."_

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Stop Guessing Why Sprints Slip

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It's Been In QA For How Long?

Every status change in Jira is a data point. But without analysis, it's just noise. 

_"We identified that issues with external dependencies spent 3x longer in 'Blocked' than internal work.\"_

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Turn Status History Into Process Insights

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The 3-Day Code Review Problem (And Why You Can't Fix What You Can't See)

Time In Status

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