Investigating the impact of pull requests on knowledge map construction

Abstract

Knowledge is a valuable asset for software engineering organisations, as effective knowledge management is crucial for competitiveness and delivering high-quality software. This final year project presents a software tool designed to analyse contributors' knowledge in source code repositories, such as GitHub, using Knowledge Maps. The tool uses data from the GitHub API and investigates improving Knowledge Map construction to gain better insight into knowledge dispersion among contributors. The dissertation focuses on Knowledge Map construction through pull request analysis, exploring its potential improvement over commit-only analysis. Pull requests, a collaborative mechanism in modern software development, allow contributors to propose codebase changes and engage in discussions. On the other hand, commits are individual changes made to the codebase without the collaborative context. Analysing pull requests, the dissertation aims to capture the knowledge exchanged during these interactions more accurately, representing it using Knowledge Maps. An industry partner was recruited as a case study, providing access to a software repository hosted on GitHub. The repository underwent commit analysis, pull request analysis, and a combination of both to construct knowledge maps, with a focus on identifying differences between the approaches and potential improvements. Stakeholders, such as team leads, evaluated the findings, providing feedback on the knowledge maps' validity and offering practical insights. The dissertation concludes with an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the approach and suggestions for future improvements. The main contributions include an investigation on whether pull request analysis adds value to knowledge map generation over the commit-only approach, through the use of a software tool. The research findings can benefit software engineering organisations seeking to better understand knowledge creation, sharing, and utilisation dynamics within their development teams.