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    State of Software Quality | Code Review 2021

    Presented by SmartBear
    We provide tools that enhance the process for every aspect of software development. And it begins and ends with quality.

    Introduction

    This report seeks to establish benchmarks for the software industry as to how teams and organizations develop high quality software in 2021. The structure of this year’s report closely mirrors the structure of our past editions: surveying respondents to provide a meaningful year-over-year comparison and uncover significant trends around code quality and development approaches.

    It covers the following topics:

    • The code and document review process
    • Perceptions of code and document review
    • The development stack
    • Release cadence and team firmographics
    • Team recommendations for 2022

    Key Takeaways

    Code review remains the number one thing a company can do to improve code quality.
    Main benefits of code review: Easily complying with regulatory standards, internal audits, and enhanced mobility of code.
    Dev teams that review daily or weekly with a tool-based system are more satisfied than teams that review biweekly or longer.
    Teams with strong code review guidelines and pull reporting metrics are more satisfied.
    Full or semi-remote teams with a code review process in place are more satisfied.
    Development teams are still remote, but now they’re larger. 37% of respondents report a team greater than ten members, compared to 30% in 2020, and 31% in 2019.

    Methodology

    SmartBear conducted a global online survey over the course of ten weeks during the months of September and October 2021. The findings are based upon aggregated responses from close to 800 software developers, testers, IT/operations professionals, and business leaders across 20 different industries. Participants in the survey work at companies of all sizes, from fewer than 25 employees to over 10,000, and have software teams ranging in size from fewer than 5 to more than 50.

    Role in Development

    Which best describes your role in software development?

    0%

    The top three roles represented in the 2021 report are:

    50%Developer
    14%SoftwareArchitect
    8%DevelopmentManager

    Company Size

    What is the total number of employees at your company?

    Industry

    In which industry do you work?

    Satisfaction

    How satisfied are you with the overall quality of the software your team delivers? (specifically regarding performance, bugs, etc.)

    0201620172018201920202021

    Teams remain satisfied with their software quality, and there are less dissatisfied teams.

    Teams remain satisfied year after year with the quality of the software they produce. The number of teams dissatisfied with their software quality has continued to decrease over the past three years.

    I am satisfied with my team's current code review process

    Most teams are satisfied with their current code review process, likely related to software quality satisfaction.

    As we will discuss in more detail later, there is a strong correlation between code review process satisfaction and team satisfaction with the quality of software produced. As shown in the previous figure, most teams are satisfied with the quality of their software. This makes sense, as most teams are satisfied with their current code review process. Less than 20% of teams say otherwise.