By skyforbes A practical playbook for reviews that catch failure modes early, speed safe merges, and shorten the distance from “oh no” to “all clear.”
Ship fixes faster. Learn 12 code review habits that cut MTTR with smaller PRs, risk stamps, rollback paths, observability hooks, and targeted testing.
Let’s be real: most teams treat code review like grammar check. Helpful, sure — but not what saves you at 2 a.m. when prod is broken. Reviews that lower MTTR (mean time to recovery) look different: they bias for quick rollback, strong signals in logs, and minimal blast radius. Here’s the field guide I wish someone handed me years ago.
1) Review for Revertability, not just correctness
Why it lowers MTTR: When things go sideways, you want a clean, surgical revert — not a week-long archaeology dig.
How to do it
- Ask: “Can this change be reverted in one commit without data loss or schema drift?”
- Prefer additive migrations (create new column/table first; switch writes; remove old later).
- Keep one change per PR (feature flag + behavior, but not unrelated refactors).
Learn more about 12 Code Review Habits That Lower MTTR