Azure DevOps; Why are reviewers optional by default

Question

When we create a new Pull Request in Azure DevOps, we've recently noticed that the Reviewer is Optional by default.

This has caused some confusion, as far as I recall, reviewers were always Required by default in the past.

Has this changed?

To make the Reviewer required, I know we can do this via the 'Add Required Reviewer' option but it would be nice if we could make the Reviewer Required by default...

Answer 1

For recent changes you may be seeing, see the this user voice request and the blog post about the new pull request experience.

One thing we've done in the past to ensure a pull request always gets a review is create teams within the project adding a set of users of which at least one will have to approve the pull request and then update the target branch policies to add the team as a required reviewer.

Answer 2

you can do that by using branch policies, the bit thats called add automatic reviewers: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/repos/git/branch-policies?view=azure-devops#automatically-include-code-reviewers