Understanding the Experience of Code Review: Misalignments, Attention, and Units of AnalysisShow others and affiliations
2022 (English)In: ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, Association for Computing Machinery , 2022, p. 170-179Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Code review is a common practice in software development and numerous studies have described different aspects of the process; its characteristics, the expectations on that process, issues around reviewer allocation, and more. However, one aspect that has not been studied to a large extent is the experience of the developers in the code review process. This is unfortunate given the significant amount of time that developers spend on this activity, where problems that degrade developers' experience on a daily basis can create work environment issues. In this paper, we present an extended analysis of an exploratory mixed-method study where we focus on developers' experience of code review. We use semi-structured interviews to gather data from two multi-national companies and conduct a follow-up survey. Our results suggest that developers are frequently bothered by misalignments in the code review tooling and process which is hindering them in carrying out their code review tasks effectively. We present an initial characterization of misalignments that may hamper the developer experience. Based on our findings, we propose directions for further exploration to improve the developer experience. © 2022 Owner/Author.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Association for Computing Machinery , 2022. p. 170-179
Keywords [en]
code review, software development, user experience, Software design, Extended analysis, Mixed method, Multi-national companies, Process issues, Review process, Semi structured interviews, Unit of analysis, Users' experiences, Work environments, Alignment
National Category
Software Engineering
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:bth-23506DOI: 10.1145/3530019.3530037Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85132409140ISBN: 9781450396134 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:bth-23506DiVA, id: diva2:1686814
Conference
26th ACM International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering, EASE 2022, Gothenburg, Sweden, 13 June 2022 through 15 June 2022
Funder
ELLIIT - The Linköping‐Lund Initiative on IT and Mobile CommunicationsSwedish Research Council, 2019-05658Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, FFL18-0231
Note
open access
2022-08-112022-08-112022-08-11Bibliographically approved