Ali Khatami · Carolin Brandt · Andy Zaidman
Software quality is crucial, but previous research showed that developers often lack awareness about QA practices in their projects. We aimed to address this gap by creating a dashboard that provides insights into various QA activities.
In this work:
- We designed RepoInsights, a dashboard that gives an overview of QA practices like testing, code reviews, automated workflows, and project guidelines.
- We conducted interviews with 14 software engineers from open-source, industry, and academia to evaluate the tool.
- We asked participants to assess real projects using RepoInsights and provide feedback on its usefulness.
Key Findings
- Most participants found value in having a centralized overview of QA metrics across their projects.
- The dashboard helped engineers reflect on QA practices by providing meaningful metrics and details about project activities.
- Participants expressed interest in using such a tool in the future, especially for periodic project health checks.
- Engineers wanted more granular, contextualized information tailored to each project’s specific needs and practices.
- There’s a need for actionable insights derived from the data, not just raw metrics.
Recommendations for Improvement
Based on participant feedback, future QA analytics tools should:
- Provide highly detailed, project-specific information
- Offer meaningful comparisons between similar projects
- Include more context about each project’s unique situation
- Generate actionable insights and improvement suggestions
- Allow customization of displayed information
- Integrate seamlessly into existing developer workflows
Why It Matters
This research lays the groundwork for better QA analytics tools. By improving developers’ awareness and understanding of QA practices, we can potentially enhance software quality across the industry.