I know where you're coming from. Had it not been for the company of colleagues who had been doing reviews, test, CI, refactoring sprints etc for a long while to

I know where you're coming from. Had it not been for the company of colleagues who had been doing reviews, test, CI, refactoring sprints etc for a long while to attest to its benefits, I would have become overwhelmed at the prospect of adopting these practices. Here are some suggestions based on my personal experience : * Don't try to do it all. Do it a step at a time. Choose what's most important for you and work on that. Maybe it is CI. Which in real terms implies automated building, testing and deployment to staging for every commit. Or it could mean writing tests for the most fragile parts of the codebase. Whatever it is, pick one. Start small. Else you'll end up with just another 10 things that you've also got to worry about. * Dedicate time, resources and a developer only to focus on this one thing. If your team is small or it is just you, hire someone to get this one thing done. * If you are not already doing it don't bother with core review meetings at this point. However integrate static checkers/linters in your commit workflow. Then move to a 2 ack process. Then do proper code review meetings (if necessary) (updates, since I am writing this in parts) * Don't enforce policies that will lead to frustration but do enforce policies that just might be a bit inconvenient. * Don't expect immediate improvements but don't stop midway, you'll probably end up in a worse situation than now if you do.