The best pull request template

A good description on a pull request is essential for the reviewer to understand the changes that have been made. At a glance, it should tell the reviewer exactly what the changes are and how they can be tested. If these criteria are met, the reviewer can quickly assess the changes and provide feedback. If not, the reviewer will either need to spend more time understanding the changes, blindly approve the changes, or just ignore the pull request entirely.

I have seen many articles on this topic which suggest requiring an entire novel for each pull request. While this might be useful for the reviewer to understand the changes, it is not practical for the developer to write this for every change. This will lead to requirements being ignored and the pull request template not actually being used.

I stumbled upon this template at a previous company and have taken it with me and adjusted depending on the project.

[Link to ticket](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ)

**Description of changes**

What does this pull request address and how?

**Checklist**

-   [ ] Tested on multiple browsers
-   [ ] Includes automated tests
-   [ ] Ready to be released to production

**Steps to test manually**

Any special instructions for reviewers

| Screenshots Before                                                                                                                         | Screenshots After                                                                                                                          |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| ![Screen Shot 2020-05-29 at 11 17 37 AM](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/4144/83203669-0e987a80-a19e-11ea-94c6-69cd857a79c8.png) | ![Screen Shot 2020-05-29 at 11 17 41 AM](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/4144/83203681-15bf8880-a19e-11ea-9008-5c25d220acf2.png) |

That's it.

At my current job I introduced this template without even telling anyone and people (mostly) just magically fill it out. Another template was tried in a different repo with the 1000 checkboxes method and it was never used.

Adjust these checkboxes to fit your project (just don't add too many).

I generally believe that any other requirements you want satisfied should be enforced by the CI/CD pipeline. Code style checks should be solved by a linter and not a checkbox in a pull request. And if people want to nitpick about code style, they can have it added to the lint rules.

Note that I have included a checkbox for automated tests because I don't really believe in arbitrary code coverage rules.

Change the screenshots to anything else that will annoy people if they aren't properly replaced!

Try this template out for yourself and let me know how you go!