Code Review Process Requirement Diagram Template

A requirement diagram for the code review process captures every formal rule, constraint, and dependency that governs a pull request from the moment it is opened until it is merged. Each node represents a distinct requirement—such as passing CI checks, receiving a minimum number of approvals, resolving all review comments, or satisfying branch protection rules—while the connecting edges show which requirements must be satisfied before the next step can proceed. The result is a single, authoritative visual that makes implicit team norms explicit and traceable, giving engineers, tech leads, and engineering managers a shared reference for what "done" actually means at each stage of the review lifecycle.

## When to Use This Template

This template is especially valuable when onboarding new engineers who need to understand your team's review standards quickly, or when your team is experiencing inconsistent merge practices and needs to align on a documented process. It also serves as a foundation for automating gate checks in CI/CD pipelines—if a requirement is visible in the diagram, it can be translated into a pipeline rule. Teams adopting trunk-based development, feature flags, or strict SLA-based review windows will find the requirement diagram particularly useful for surfacing hidden dependencies, such as security scans that must complete before a compliance approval can be granted.

## Common Mistakes to Avoid

One of the most frequent errors is conflating activities with requirements. Steps like "developer opens PR" are activities; "PR description must reference a ticket ID" is a requirement. Keep every node phrased as a verifiable condition, not an action. Another common pitfall is omitting negative requirements—constraints that define what must *not* happen, such as "no force-push to main after review begins" or "no self-approval allowed." These are just as enforceable as positive requirements and belong in the diagram. Finally, avoid over-specifying tool-specific details (e.g., exact GitHub Actions job names) inside the requirement nodes themselves; keep requirements tool-agnostic so the diagram remains valid even as your toolchain evolves. Linking requirements to external policy documents or ADRs in the diagram metadata is a better practice for traceability without cluttering the visual.