Masters Thesis Presentation - Serban Alexandru Tonie

Title: Do Group Reviews Balance Developer Workload? An Empirical Study at Mozilla

Abstract:

Developer workload has become an increasingly important factor in reviewer recommendation systems. While prior research has focused on preventing the overburdening of expert reviewers, there remains a gap in understanding the effects of uneven workload distribution on the code review process. Group review assignments are believed to be a potential mechanism for distributing work more evenly among developers. In this study, we analyze the code review process in Mozilla’s Phabricator system, focusing on two projects: Firefox and Thunderbird. We examine workload distributions across contributors, top reviewers, and the impact of group assignments on workload balance. Our analysis reveals that highly active contributors are able to handle large volumes of reviews efficiently, whereas developers with moderate workloads tend to experience higher review latency. Furthermore, we find that group review requests can sometimes improve workload distribution, but their effectiveness varies by group. Factors such as group composition, size, and existing workload imbalance strongly influence whether review tasks are successfully balanced.

Supervisors: Dr. Ayushi Rastogi, Dr. Mirela Riveni, Dr. Marco Castelluccio