<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>A good assignment of code reviewers can effectively utilize the intellectual resources, assure code quality and improve programmers’ skills in software development. However, little research on reviewer assignment of code review has been found. In this study, a code reviewer assignment model is created based on participants’ preference to reviewing assignment. With a constraint of the smallest size of a review group, the model is optimized to maximize review outcomes and avoid the negative impact of “mutual admiration society”. This study shows that the reviewer assignment strategies incorporating either the reviewers’ preferences or the authors’ preferences get much improvement than a random assignment. The strategy incorporating authors’ preference makes higher improvement than that incorporating reviewers’ preference. However, when the reviewers’ and authors’ preference matrixes are merged, the improvement becomes moderate. The study indicates that the majority of the participants have a strong wish to work with reviewers and authors having highest competence. If we want to satisfy the preference of both reviewers and authors at the same time, the overall improvement of learning outcomes may be not the best.</p></abstract>

A good assignment of code reviewers can effectively utilize the intellectual resources, assure code quality and improve programmers’ skills in software development. However, little research on reviewer assignment of code review has been found. In this study, a code reviewer assignment model is created based on participants’ preference to reviewing assignment. With a constraint of the smallest size of a review group, the model is optimized to maximize review outcomes and avoid the negative impact of “mutual admiration society”. This study shows that the reviewer assignment strategies incorporating either the reviewers’ preferences or the authors’ preferences get much improvement than a random assignment. The strategy incorporating authors’ preference makes higher improvement than that incorporating reviewers’ preference. However, when the reviewers’ and authors’ preference matrixes are merged, the improvement becomes moderate. The study indicates that the majority of the participants have a strong wish to work with reviewers and authors having highest competence. If we want to satisfy the preference of both reviewers and authors at the same time, the overall improvement of learning outcomes may be not the best.

A code reviewer assignment model incorporating the competence differences and participant preferences

School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, P. R. China

Department of Information Systems, College of Business Administration, California State University Long Beach, CA 90840, USA

Foundations of Computing and Decision Sciences

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

A good assignment of code reviewers can effectively utilize the intellectual resources, assure code quality and improve programmers’ skills in software...

A code reviewer assignment model incorporating the competence differences and participant preferences

Published Online: Mar 31, 2016

Page range: 77 - 91

Received: Oct 23, 2014

Accepted: Oct 20, 2015

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/fcds-2016-0004

Keywords
peer code review, reviewer assignment problem (RAP), code review assignment model, preference matrix, subtour-size constraint, mutual admiration society

© 2016 Yanqing Wang et al., published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

A code reviewer assignment model incorporating the competence differences and participant preferences

Published Online: Mar 31, 2016

Page range: 77 - 91

Received: Oct 23, 2014

Accepted: Oct 20, 2015

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/fcds-2016-0004

Keywordspeer code review, reviewer assignment problem (RAP), code review assignment model, preference matrix, subtour-size constraint, mutual admiration society

© 2016 Yanqing Wang et al., published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
peer code review, reviewer assignment problem (RAP), code review assignment model, preference matrix, subtour-size constraint, mutual admiration society