Affiliation:
1. University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
2. University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom
Abstract
Code review consists of manual inspection, discussion, and judgment of source code by developers other than the code's author. Due to discussions around competing ideas and group decision-making processes, interpersonal conflicts during code reviews are expected. This study systematically investigates how developers perceive code review conflicts and addresses interpersonal conflicts during code reviews as a theoretical construct. Through the thematic analysis of interviews conducted with 22 developers, we confirm that conflicts during code reviews are commonplace, anticipated and seen as normal by developers. Even though conflicts do happen and carry a negative impact for the review, conflicts-if resolved constructively-can also create value and bring improvement. Moreover, the analysis provided insights on how strongly conflicts during code review and its context (i.e., code, developer, team, organization) are intertwined. Finally, there are aspects specific to code review conflicts that call for the research and application of customized conflict resolution and management techniques, some of which are discussed in this paper. Preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.05425 Data and material: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5848794
Funder
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Furderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Subject
Computer Networks and Communications,Human-Computer Interaction,Social Sciences (miscellaneous)
Reference85 articles.
1. 2021. https://docs.github.com/en/github/collaborating-with-pull-requests title = GitHub Docs: Collaborating with Pull Requests. 2021. https://docs.github.com/en/github/collaborating-with-pull-requests title = GitHub Docs: Collaborating with Pull Requests.
2. 2021. Atlassian Crucible: Collaborative Code Review. https://www.atlassian.com/software/crucible. 2021. Atlassian Crucible: Collaborative Code Review. https://www.atlassian.com/software/crucible.
3. 2021. Gerrit Code Review. https://www.gerritcodereview.com/. 2021. Gerrit Code Review. https://www.gerritcodereview.com/.
4. 2021. Phabricator. https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabricator/article/introduction/. 2021. Phabricator. https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabricator/article/introduction/.
5. Software inspections: an effective verification process
Cited by
2 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献，注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献，订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献
1. Emotion Analysis in Software Ecosystems;Software Ecosystems;2023
2. Interpersonal Conflicts During Code Review;Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction;2022-03-30