On the understanding of programs with continuous code reviews

Mario Bernhart, Thomas Grechenig
DB

Abstract

Code reviews are a very effective, but effortful quality assurance technique. A major problem is to read and understand source-code that was produced by someone else. With different programming styles and complex interactions, understanding the code under review is the most expensive sub-task of a code review. As with many other modern software engineering practices, code reviews may be applied as a continuous process to reduce the effort and support the concept of collective ownership. This study evaluates the effect of a continuous code review process on the understandability and collective ownership of the code base. A group of 8 subjects performed a total of 114 code reviews within 18 months in an industrial context and conducted an expert evaluation according to this research question. This study concludes that there is a clear positive effect on the understandability and collective ownership of the code base with continuous code reviews, but also limiting factors and drawbacks for complex review tasks.

Type
Conference paper
Publication
Talk: 21st International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC 2013), San Francisco, USA; 05-20-2013 - 05-21-2013; in: “Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Program Comprehension”, H. Kagdi et al. (ed.); Conference Publishing Consulting, Passau, Germany (2013), ISBN: 978-1-4673-3092-3; 192 - 198
Thomas Grechenig
Thomas Grechenig
Ao.Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn.