Sven Amann
Are Code Reviews Worth It? Insights from 16 Years of Review Data
#1about 2 minutes
Proving the value of code reviews with data
The talk aims to provide quantitative data from 16 years of development to convince management of the benefits of code reviews.
#2about 3 minutes
Context of the 16-year development data set
An overview of the Teamscale product, its 1.5 million line codebase, and the team's development velocity provides context for the data analysis.
#3about 3 minutes
The asynchronous code review workflow in practice
The team uses a feature branch workflow with asynchronous reviews in GitLab, where the reviewer has the final authority to merge.
#4about 2 minutes
Defining value vs cost for code review analysis
The analysis frames the "worth" of code reviews by comparing their value (code improvement, knowledge sharing) against their cost (developer time).
#5about 2 minutes
Analyzing the time cost of the review cycle
An analysis of time logged on tickets reveals the distribution of time spent in the "in review" and "in rework" phases.
#6about 6 minutes
Investigating outliers where review time is high
An example ticket shows how scope creep and implementing new requirements during the review cycle can significantly inflate review time data.
#7about 4 minutes
Quantifying the cost and value of code reviews
Data shows reviews add 33% to development time while providing an average of 1.6 bug fixes and 5 maintainability improvements per ticket.
#8about 1 minute
Conclusion: Weighing the costs against the benefits
Weighing the 33% additional time cost against the benefits of bug fixes, maintainability improvements, and knowledge sharing confirms their value.
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