If you are out of the loop because you didn't work on a project for half a year or even are completely new to a project, this approach seems pretty impossible f

If you are out of the loop because you didn't work on a project for half a year or even are completely new to a project, this approach seems pretty impossible for myself. At least with the dynamics I had at the job described above (which included lots of project rotation among devs). I'm sure there are fitting settings where this approach might work, though.