Pre-merge code reviews are one of the most impactful practices a development team can adopt. The core rules: always push to a separate branch, never merge your own branch, review work in progress before starting new tasks, and treat merging as a team responsibility. Benefits include early defect detection, shared code ownership, reduced bus factor, and better team morale. Practical tips cover atomic stories and commits, using pull requests as ongoing conversations, integrating frequently, and reviewing tests first when time is short. Common anti-patterns to avoid include merge buddies gaming the system, a single gatekeeper bottleneck, teams dismissing reviews as too time-consuming, developers hoarding code ownership, and wasting review time on trivial formatting issues instead of meaningful design and quality concerns.
