A Faceted Classification Scheme for Change-Based Industrial Code Review Processes

Abstract

Code review in the industry today is different to code review twenty years ago. The process has become more lightweight, reviews are performed frequently and change-based and the use of specialized tools is increasing. An accurate view of the current state of the industrial practice is an indispensable foundation for improving it. Most recent descriptions of review practices come from a limited population of large hightech companies. Therefore, we used interviews with software engineering professionals from a broad sample of 19 companies to gain insight into their code review practices. We augmented our findings with data for 11 companies found through a semisystematic literature review. There are many commonalities in the code review processes of these companies, but also a lot of variation in the details. A simple process taxonomy cannot describe these variations adequately. Therefore, we present a faceted classification scheme that is grounded in our observations.