Expectations, Outcomes, and Challenges of Modern Code Review

Bacchelli, A., & Bird, C. (2013). Expectations, Outcomes, and Challenges of Modern Code Review. Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 712-721.

Type

Conference paper

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

2013

Pages

712-721

DOI

10.1109/icse.2013.6606617

DOI registrant

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Link

https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE.2013.6606617

Cited from

synthesized

Cited by

3 citations across 3 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Inverted-U Response
  • The engineering instance runs parallel: review intensity (reviewers per change, hours per review) drives defect-catching (productive: more eyes find more bugs) against queueing and reviewer fatigue (counter-mechanism: changes stall, reviewers rubber-stamp), so productivity peaks at an interior optimum, and a team that has been adding reviewers because "review has been working" is running exactly the "it's working, do more of it" reasoning the shape exists to interrupt.

    This sourceEmpirical study of modern code review documenting that its defect-finding and other benefits are offset by delays and reviewer load, consistent with a review-intensity-versus-productivity interior optimum.

Domain-specific

• Code Review
  • Empirical research finds benefits beyond defect discovery, including knowledge transfer, team awareness, and generation of alternative solutions.
• Parkinson's Law of Triviality (Bikeshedding)
  • Software code review — review comments cluster on naming, formatting, and surface style rather than algorithmic correctness or system-design implications.

    This sourceAn empirical study at Microsoft finding that, though defect-finding remains the main motivation, reviews are less about defects than expected and code and change understanding is the key aspect of reviewing.

    Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract

    “while finding defects remains the main motivation for review, reviews are less about defects than expected and instead provide additional benefits such as knowledge transfer, increased team awareness, and creation of alternative solutions to problems.”

    Read by an automated reader; not a human review. How support was checked

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