Enhance

A change to code that already exists. Six phases, one gate.

The dominant risk is not doing it wrong — it is not fitting in. New code gets judged on whether it works; a change to existing code gets judged on whether it looks like it was always there. Duplication, a second way of doing something the codebase already does, a helper reinvented forty lines from its twin — these pass review more often than they should and cost more than a bug.

The existing code is most of the specification. Whatever the ticket says, the surrounding code has already decided the shape, the naming, the error handling and the layering. Reading it is not preparation for the work; it is the larger half of it.

Language

Answer in the language the request was written in. Findings, explanations, questions, reports and section headings you produce for a developer follow their language — Russian request, Russian answer.