---
title: "Discussion on \"Small PRs to the Rescue 🦸🏽‍♀️\" | Hashnode"
description: "Discussion on \"Small PRs to the Rescue 🦸🏽‍♀️\". Big PRs are hard to review. Everybody knows that. I recently read two great articles (thanks @sandeep) and I want to summarize them here with some of my own thoughts.\nThe articles are How to Scope Down PRs and An Opinionated Guide To Handling Pull Re..."
url: "https://hashnode.com/posts/small-prs-to-the-rescue/6253fc2f6386ed96b050a282"
---

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Discussion

# [Small PRs to the Rescue 🦸🏽‍♀️](https://sandro.volpee.de/small-prs-to-the-rescue?utm_source=hashnode&utm_medium=feed)

Big PRs are hard to review. Everybody knows that. I recently read two great articles (thanks @sandeep) and I want to summarize them here with some of my own thoughts. The articles are How to Scope Down PRs and An Opinionated Guide To Handling Pull Re...

Apr 11, 2022 · 3 min read · sandro.volpee.de  
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-   [#code-review](https://hashnode.com/tag/code-review)
-   [#software-development](https://hashnode.com/tag/software-development)
-   [#software-engineering](https://hashnode.com/tag/software-engineering)
-   [#github](https://hashnode.com/tag/github)
-   [#programming](https://hashnode.com/tag/programming)

## Written by

[Sandro Volpicella](https://hashnode.com/@SandroVolpicella)

@SandroVolpicella · Germany 🇩🇪

  
[View profile](https://hashnode.com/@SandroVolpicella)

Fullstack Engineer @Hashnode. I love building serverless things and talk about it 🙂

I am a fullstack engineer working here @ hashnode. I love the cloud and really like to build serverless things that scale. https://awsfundamentals.com 📕 https://cloudwatchbook.com 📙

## Responses 4

Markdown supported · ⌘↵ to post

[Shad Mirza](https://hashnode.com/@iamshadmirza)

[Apr 21, 2022](https://hashnode.com/posts/small-prs-to-the-rescue/6253fc2f6386ed96b050a282/comment/62617d720f819f588af72912)

Damn, I was writing a very similar piece. Gotta update my draft now 😅  
Great read [Sandro Volpicella](https://hashnode.com/@SandroVolpicella)

[Sandro Volpicella](https://hashnode.com/@SandroVolpicella)

[Apr 22, 2022](https://hashnode.com/posts/small-prs-to-the-rescue/6253fc2f6386ed96b050a282/comment/62617d720f819f588af72912#reply-6262a0950f819f588af74506)

😃 go ahead!

[Chris Bongers](https://hashnode.com/@dailydevtips)

[Apr 12, 2022](https://hashnode.com/posts/small-prs-to-the-rescue/6253fc2f6386ed96b050a282/comment/625592dab32ddd968bbebc9c)

We also love to ship as small and independant as possible. However not always possible, for instance a big new feature (standalone system for instance) how would you go about that?

(meaning the PR is still "small" but way bigger then just a couple of lines of code)

[Sandro Volpicella](https://hashnode.com/@SandroVolpicella)

[Apr 13, 2022](https://hashnode.com/posts/small-prs-to-the-rescue/6253fc2f6386ed96b050a282/comment/625592dab32ddd968bbebc9c#reply-62569301b32ddd968bbed2ae)

I think it depends. It is not always possible that is true.

But if it is a standalone feature I always suggest building a sub-part of that feature and put it behind a feature flag.

E.g. you want to build a new Analytics Feature

-   Start with the button to the new feature
-   Add the API routes
-   Add one pane

Etc. And if everything is behind a feature flag for example just for team members this is easily possible to make smaller PRs.

I think it is not possible to have small prs for things like huge refactors.

For example you want to combine all common components of all pages in your next app from `pages/*` into `_app` then you need to touch all files within one PR and this will result in a huge one.

[Emilio](https://hashnode.com/@obiwabrakenobi)

[Apr 14, 2022](https://hashnode.com/posts/small-prs-to-the-rescue/6253fc2f6386ed96b050a282/comment/625592dab32ddd968bbebc9c#reply-6258618b52fb7bd53380b61f)

[Sandro Volpicella](https://hashnode.com/@SandroVolpicella)

I think before using feature flags and shrink everything into smaller PRs a team should always try to focus on the business increment for the user and make that small as possible in the first place. Sure, this is a hard thing but from my perspective a „big“ feature comes always with „big“ testing efforts regardless of the PR sizes and makes it anyway hard to review

[Victor Eke](https://hashnode.com/@Eke)

[Apr 12, 2022](https://hashnode.com/posts/small-prs-to-the-rescue/6253fc2f6386ed96b050a282/comment/62550cf86386ed96b050bda8)

These are awesome tips [Sandro Volpicella](https://hashnode.com/@SandroVolpicella). My favourite are keeping PRs small and making sure they solve or add one functionality. This helps a lot, especially when you have issues in a particular PR, tracking or fixing it becomes easier, and if for some reason it breaks the codebase, git revert to the rescue. 😅

[Sandro Volpicella](https://hashnode.com/@SandroVolpicella)

[Apr 12, 2022](https://hashnode.com/posts/small-prs-to-the-rescue/6253fc2f6386ed96b050a282/comment/62550cf86386ed96b050bda8#reply-625511fb6386ed96b050be30)

Thanks! If you're interested in the topic definitely read both mentioned articles :)

[Victor Eke](https://hashnode.com/@Eke)

[Apr 12, 2022](https://hashnode.com/posts/small-prs-to-the-rescue/6253fc2f6386ed96b050a282/comment/62550cf86386ed96b050bda8#reply-6255489c6386ed96b050c4e1)

[Sandro Volpicella](https://hashnode.com/@SandroVolpicella) Sure, I will 👌

[Gaurang](https://hashnode.com/@gsdev)

[Apr 11, 2022](https://hashnode.com/posts/small-prs-to-the-rescue/6253fc2f6386ed96b050a282/comment/62544c6ab32ddd968bbe99ee)

Thanks for the summary [Sandro Volpicella](https://hashnode.com/@SandroVolpicella). This is especially useful for me!

Gonna dig into the reference articles you provided as well!