Review Cycle Duration within a Change Request

Question: What is the duration of a review cycle within a single change request ?

A change request is based on one or more review cycles. Within a review cycle, one or more reviewers can provide feedback on a proposed contribution. The duration of a review cycle, or the time between each new iteration of the contribution, is the basis of this metric.

Objectives

This metric provides maintainers with insight on: Code review process decay, as there are more iterations and review cycle durations increase. Process bottlenecks resulting in long code review iterations. Abandoned or semi-abandoned processes in the review cycles, where either the maintainer or the submitter is slow in responding. Characteristics of reviews that have different cyclic pattern lengths.

Implementation

Review Cycle Duration is measured as the time length of one review cycle within a single change request. The duration can be calculated between: The moment when each review cycle begins, defined as the point in time when a change request is submitted or updated. The moment when each review cycle ends, either because the change request was updated and needs a new review or because it was accepted or rejected.

Filter

Average or Median Duration, optionally filtered or grouped by:

• Number of people involved in review
• Number of comments in review
• Edits made to a change request
• Project or program
• Organization making the change request
• Time the change request was submitted
• Developers who contributed to a change request
• Change request
• Number of review cycle on a change request (e.g., filter by first, second, … round)

---