Is Axolo the right fit for my company?

As software developers, we know the importance of engaging in code reviews to keep our code quality sane and ship value to our customers faster. That's where tools like Axolo come in. Axolo allows you to review pull requests in Slack, which can help you merge code faster and maintain high code quality.

Love it or hate it

One of the key features of Axolo is that it creates an ephemeral Slack channel for each pull request. This allows your team to easily collaborate and discuss the changes being proposed. However, not everyone is a fan of this approach - some people love it, while others hate it.

What do our users say

We often ask our users for their feedback on Axolo through a net promoter score (NPS) survey. The results are quite striking: 80% of our users say that they would recommend Axolo to a friend, with an average score of 9 out of 10.

On the other hand, 14% of engineers who try Axolo for two consecutive weeks answer 3 or less on the NPS question, indicating that they strongly dislike the tool.

Questions to ask yourself and your team:

So, how do you know if Axolo is the right fit for your team? Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

1. Are you a heavy Slack user? Do you use shortcuts, custom emojis, and sections to organize your channels?
2. You can't bother to take the time to set up your GitHub email notifications with special rules on your email client?
3. Do you have an in-house bot that is slowly being ignored by your team, or do engineers in the team neglect the official GitHub bot notifications?
4. Do you feel like it takes too long for your reviewers to look at your pull requests when you ask them to?
5. In the last week, at least two other people from your team ask you to review their PR on Slack?

Bonus Question

6. Do you get pull request conflicts because your pull request take too long to be merged?

Is Axolo the right fit for my company?

If you've answered yes to more than three of the questions there is a 90% probability that Axolo can help improve your team's workflow.

Trying out Axolo

Now if you're interested in using Axolo to improve your code review process, here are a few metrics you can use to determine if it's a success:

• Pick-up time: How long does it take on average for a developer to do the first review?
• Engagement on pull requests: Has engagement in code review increased or decreased since the introduction of Axolo?
• Developer experience: Are your team and developers happier using Axolo? (We have a template for running a developer experience survey)

Conclusion

By tracking these metrics, you can determine if it is improving your code review process and increasing your team's satisfaction. Some engineers may want to read reviews from other users to see if it is a good fit for them. You can find reviews on G2, where you can get a preview of what it offers. Give it a try to see if it works for you!