About the Survey

Integral Zone launched its first 2022 Annual Trend Survey on Code Reviews in the month of January. The survey was answered by over a hundred senior decision-makers worldwide. The concept of code reviews is subjective. Organizations adhere to different standards, with no common protocol. By bringing in data from a variety of sources, this survey will help to speak the language of the processes used by the industry.

The questions focused on the unprecedented challenges and opportunities in the Code reviews segment for the year 2022.

Among the many themes that were covered in the survey were behavioural, procedural, and operational influences on code reviews. This survey will help developers, solution architects, and API leaders understand the best practices followed by the industry and make key decisions.

Let’s take a closer look at the survey results and their deeper interpretations.

Frequency of Code reviews

The study indicates that Code reviews are treated as a priority by many organizations, where they are conducted once per day or a few times a week. The serious implication is that Organizations with smaller teams find it difficult to do daily reviews with escalating projects and backlogs. It is also interesting to note that the responses are based on initial level reviews. It is not addressed here whether code reviews should be remedied which may add to the conundrum.

Codes are reviewed either once per day or a few times a week

Code review practices the Industry follows

Over 50% of organizations resort to traditional manual methods of code reviews such as Team lead and peer reviews. Manual processes are believed to be a contributing factor to poor code quality standards and maintenance of technical debt. Few of the respondents had also said that many of these reviews are redundant checks.

About 75% of the industry still uses manual code review tools, which are prone to errors and deficiencies

Average time taken for code reviews

Approximately 87.5% of respondents said that code reviews take between one to three hours. A very striking finding is that at least 40% of daily hours are spent on code reviews. This is in addition to the fact that more than 60% of organizations rely on manual code reviews. It’s also eye-opening to realize how many hours are wasted on non-productive activities.

40% of average daily hours are spent on Code reviews

Is the code review process becoming a bottle neck?

Over 60% of the respondents finds that code review process is not becoming a bottle neck despite them spending many hours on the reviews. This is a classic example of “Sunk cost fallacy” theory where respondents continue to support the past commitments despite new evidence suggesting that it isn’t the best course of action.

Respondents expressed a state of contentment with the current code review process

Ideal code coverage

Approximately 85% of respondents were unable to achieve a code coverage percentage of at least 80%. This shows the poor quality standards of the build.

87.5% reported a low percentage for Code reviews

Overall, my technical debt is?

The majority of respondents reported that their technical debt was at a medium level of 50%. In such cases, technical debt can lead to non-compliance, and poor code standards and ultimately reduce the team’s productivity.

87.5% of the respondents reported technical debt at a medium level (<50%)

Key metrics for Code reviews

Security, speed and cost are said to be the top metrics desired for code quality reviews. Code reviews process weighs Security as one of its key parameter. Any insecure piece of code is vulnerable to cause potential harm at a later stage of Software development. It also implies that many security vulnerabilities and major bugs are being introduced in the production code.

Security, speed and cost are considered to be the key metrics for code reviews

Top reasons for choosing automated code review solutions

Reducing cost, time and improved code quality was found to be the top reasons for choosing an Automated code quality solution. This resonates well with the qualities of an ideal automated code review quality solution.

Creating efficiencies at scale is one of the top priorities for choosing automated code review tools

Barriers to adopting an automated code quality solution

No support from Management, and inadequate skill sets are the top barriers. Setting up of a Center for Excellence should serve as a policy maker to tap into the right skills and management support

Poor Management support is one of the top barriers to adopting an automated code review solution

Integration of automated code review processes with CI/CD pipelines

Three fourth of the respondents said that they integrate their automated code review process with CI/CD pipelines which a best practice. Automation helps with seamless integration with DevOps processes and prevents defect discovery at later stages.

Automated code reviews help with seamless integration with CI/CD pipelines

Conclusion

It was the first survey of its kind, conducted by Integral Zone to identify challenges and opportunities associated with Code quality review processes. There is no doubt that most organizations have their own practices. We need an industrial standard that is widely accepted. Furthermore, clients were unable to assess the severity of errors and accepted standards of vulnerability, among other things. For such teams, Integral Zone recommends MuleSoft Center for Enablement (C4E) in order to transform the way teams work in terms of Governance, best practices, and domain knowledge.

Reviewing code improves code quality by detecting potential problems before they snowball out of control and ensuring consistency. The result is a robust software that is built from components for seamless integration and functionality. One of the key findings of this survey is that around 40% of the time is spent reviewing code, which is approximately 3.2 hours in a typical 8-hour day. By automating code reviews, 90 percent of the hours can be saved. The opportunity cost of organizations is higher because they are losing many productive hours.

Lastly, Integral Zone is a leader in the enterprise integration space and have worked with many Fortune 100 companies transforming way they work. If you would like to know more, write to info@integralzone.com