Understanding the Experience of Code Review: Misalignments, Attention, and Units of Analysis

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 signifi-
cant 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 misalign-
ments 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.