Keep pull requests small with a batch size working agreement

Smaller pull requests are easier to review, ship faster, and introduce less risk. But it’s hard to maintain good habits without visibility into how you’re actually doing.

You can now create a working agreement to limit pull request batch size in your team. When someone opens a PR that exceeds your agreed limit, you’ll know about it — making it easier to course-correct and maintain momentum.

Here’s why smaller pull requests are better

• Faster, better reviews: Engineers tend to postpone reviewing large PRs. And when they do start, code review fatigue can set in — resulting in superficial reviews instead of thoughtful feedback.
• Protected flow: Smaller PRs mean smaller tasks, which require less context to hold in your head. This makes it easier to get back into flow after interruptions.
• Reduced risk: Working in small increments helps prevent scope creep and makes it easier to hand work over to teammates when needed.

Getting started

First, get your team aligned on keeping pull requests small, then:

1. Navigate to Agreements / Explore / Limit pull request batch size
2. Set your maximum lines changed per pull request (we recommend starting with 500)
3. Make sure your team’s daily Slack digest is enabled to help you stay on top of your new agreement

Like all working agreements in Swarmia, this helps you build better habits through better visibility and gentle nudges. You can adjust the limit any time as your team finds its rhythm.

More updates

• You can now create new topics to organize your custom questions in developer experience surveys.
• By installing our new Jira app, you can limit which Jira projects you grant Swarmia API access to, instead of connecting everything and filtering in the UI. This is similar to GitHub’s own setting for limiting what repos an app can access.
• Your focus summary now shows total available effort for selected teams, making it easier to compare how much effort went into specific work versus what was available overall.