Aglet

Prioritize an overloaded code review queue by risk

Review volume alone does not identify the most important decision. Prioritization should compare consequence and reversibility, protect scarce expertise for decisions that need it, and make lower-risk work movable without degrading the review contract. A short queue is not useful if high-risk decisions were moved without the review they require.

Decide where the work belongs

  1. Score decision risk qualitatively

    For each item, record blocked outcomes, severity, reversibility, evidence confidence, dependency leverage, and required expertise. Keep the rationale visible and avoid creating a numeric ranking that implies unsupported precision. Compare decisions by consequence and reversibility before using waiting time as a tiebreaker.

  2. Match depth to risk

    Choose full review, focused review, peer review, clarification, or deferment based on the decision boundary. State what each path verifies and what it cannot establish, especially when an alternate reviewer takes the item.

  3. Set the queue order

    Place decisions in order with owner, review window, and escalation trigger. Include a capacity decision when no safe reviewer is available, rather than allowing the highest-volume requester to control the queue.

What to carry forward

The output is a risk-based review queue with explicit depth, expertise, ownership, and delay tradeoffs. Stop when every pending item has a safe review path; if capacity remains insufficient, escalate the capacity decision instead of silently lowering standards.

Keep the decision with the work.

Use a Work Item in Aglet to record the problem, the evidence you have, and the next decision. Add an owner and priority, then keep updates in the discussion so the next person can follow the reasoning.

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