Bitesizing Code Review in the Age of AI

A quick community talk on code reviews.

Transcript

1. Bitesizing code review Digesting walls of text Review responsibilities, perspectives and age of AI Maaret Pyhäjärvi September 2026 © 2026 CGI Inc. 1
2. MOTIVATION Why this talk © 2026 CGI Inc. 1 Apologized for review comments in last two weeks. 2 As second reviewer, have disagreed with the silent acceptance of first reviewer. 3 Raised a wall of text problem and broke first assumption of how we must work. 4 Love perspective based visual code reviews and hate humans in wrong place in loop. 5 Believe git first is future of work with AI. 6 On 5th day of compile, we learned of problems… 2
3. MY CREDENTIALS Producing whole lot of unreviewed code, some visible out there 1 Developers can review and test their own code, given time to pay attention. 2 Sharing work increases quality by allowing to pay attention while schedules are squeezed. 3 Testers are developers. © 2026 CGI Inc. 3
4. COMMIT ANALYTICS Git First in Age of AI Comm its are a poor metr ic of th roughpu t, but a gr eat indi cator fo r amou nt of c hange we deal with. © 2026 CGI Inc. 4
5. MANAGED BY INDEPENDENCE From 10 to 100 to 1000 a day R E V I E W E R A S H E L P E R v s G AT E K E E P E R REVIEW ON COMM IT vs. PR HUMAN vs AI REV IEWER SHIP – SHOW – ASK “Be the bird, not the statue.” © 2026 CGI Inc. 5
6. SHOW UP TOGETHER FOR SIGNIFICANT IMPACT AND RISK 1st pair of eyes, 2nd pair of eyes Your list of what you'd like to see instead: - "suggest changes only when that is needed not because you can" - "improve the culture created around 'acceptance' power dynamic and remove some of the power reviewers hold as guardians of the codebase" - "when suggesting extensive changes, go to the person and volunteer to pair" - "volunteer to pair before the work has been done” (Things Maaret of past has said.) © 2026 CGI Inc. 6
7. CODE REVIEWS Collected advice 1 Team skill.md for review applied on pull request Stop asking AI separately, set a standard and make it routine. Agree a trust-based reaction policy. 2 Exploratory code reviews Ask questions relevant to 2 nd pair of eyes on top. Ask perspective and visual. Architecture is perspective. 3 Ship – Show – Ask to avoid review exhaustion Design for process variation for code review. Learn if you make mistakes on it. 4 Pull request should allow for functional review (testing) through ephemeral test environments What if you can run it and play with it, not just look at the code. Stronger feedback on small batches. 5 Large is small by sampling and automating Split work for 1st pair of eyes and 2 nd pair of eyes explicitly. Properties / evals. Build a system. © 2026 CGI Inc. 7
8. Insights you can act on Founded in 1976, CGI is among the largest IT and business consulting services firms in the world. We are insights-driven and outcomes-focused to help accelerate returns on your investments. Across hundreds of locations worldwide, we provide comprehensive, scalable and sustainable IT and business consulting services that are informed globally and delivered locally. cgi.com © 2026 CGI Inc. 8