ICSE 2024
Fri 12 - Sun 21 April 2024 Lisbon, Portugal
Fri 19 Apr 2024 14:15 - 14:30 at Luis de Freitas Branco - Human and Social 7 Chair(s): Igor Steinmacher

Code review is an activity where developers receive feedback on their code contributions from other developers. The frequent and potentially negative feedback developers receive makes code review prone to interpersonal conflicts. Therefore, the research community is showing a rising interest in this issue. There is a consensus about such behavior being anti-social and leading to negative outcomes for the code, team, project, and even the company. However, these conflicts are a naturally occurring phenomenon that can actually lead to reaping the benefits of code review if managed well. Interpersonal conflicts in code review are not necessarily an issue to avoid, but rather to be managed.

In this study, we survey developers in two companies - Adnovum, working predominantly on closed-source projects, and in Red Hat open source projects. Based on a set of 154 respondents, we have found that 77% of developers sometimes experience interpersonal conflicts in code review, even though mostly not very frequently. These conflicts pose some degree of a problem to 64% of developers. However, developers are rather successful in deriving constructive outcomes in the face of conflicts - 24% of developers actually report that conflicts have more positive than negative outcomes. While they are highly successful in deriving positive outcomes for code quality and maintainability, the motivation of developers and their communication and collaboration in a team has the most potential to be harmed by conflicts. The most effective strategy to have constructive rather than destructive conflicts is managing work effort and re-assigning tasks in the team to reduce stress in the code review.

Fri 19 Apr

Displayed time zone: Lisbon change

14:00 - 15:30
14:00
15m
Talk
“I tend to view ads almost like a pestilence”: On the Accessibility Implications of Mobile Ads for Blind Users
Research Track
Ziyao He University of California, Irvine, Syed Fatiul Huq University of California, Irvine, Sam Malek University of California at Irvine
14:15
15m
Talk
Constructive Code Review: Managing the Impact of Interpersonal Conflicts in Practice
Software Engineering in Practice
Pavlina Wurzel Goncalves University of Zurich, Joao S. V. Goncalves University of Zurich, Alberto Bacchelli University of Zurich
14:30
15m
Talk
Motivating Open Source Collaborations Through Social Network Evaluation: A Gamification Practice from Alibaba
Software Engineering in Practice
Shengyu Zhao Tongji University, Xiaoya Xia East China Normal University, Brian Fitzgerald Lero - The Irish Software Research Centre and University of Limerick, Xiaozhou Li University of Oulu, Valentina Lenarduzzi University of Oulu, Davide Taibi University of Oulu and Tampere University , Rong Wang Alibaba Group, will wang , Chunqi Tian Yongji University
14:45
15m
Talk
Objectives and Key Results in Software Teams: Challenges, Opportunities and Impact on Development
Software Engineering in Practice
Jenna L. Butler Microsoft Research, Thomas Zimmermann Microsoft Research, Christian Bird Microsoft Research
15:00
7m
Talk
Dealing with Data Challenges when Delivering Data-Intensive Software Solutions
Journal-first Papers
Ulrike Maria Graetsch , Hourieh Khalajzadeh Deakin University, Australia, Rashina Hoda Monash University, Mojtaba Shahin RMIT University, John Grundy Monash University
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
15:07
7m
Talk
What’s (Not) Working in Programmer User Studies?
Journal-first Papers
Matthew C. Davis Carnegie Mellon University, Emad Aghayi , Thomas LaToza George Mason University, Xiaoyin Wang University of Texas at San Antonio, Brad A. Myers Carnegie Mellon University, Joshua Sunshine Carnegie Mellon University
Link to publication DOI
15:14
7m
Talk
Confirmation Bias and Time Pressure: A Family of Experiments in Software Testing
Journal-first Papers
Iflaah Salman Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (LUT), Burak Turhan University of Oulu, Robert Ramač Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Vladimir Mandić Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad