From Trunk-Based to Merge Requests: A Field Study at Adyen

Master thesis (2021)

Authors

T. de Boer Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Contributors

Maurício Aniche Software Engineering - EEMCS (mentor)
A.E. Zaidman Software Engineering - EEMCS (graduation committee member)
C.B. Poulsen Programming Languages - EEMCS (graduation committee member)
Faculty
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Copyright: © 2021 Toon de Boer
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Published Date

08-11-2021

Language

English

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Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Abstract

Many development models exist, but finding which one is the right for a specific project or software company is difficult. Every project has its requirements and might need its own development model. The most popular development models are trunk-based development and merge requests.
There are no clear science-based guidelines on when to adopt one model or the other and challenges that teams face when migrating from one to another.
We perform a field study as this master thesis aims to provide more understanding on the impact of migrating from one development model to another at a large company. More specifically, a migration from trunk-based development to merge request-based development at a large software engineering company.
During this research, we interview 19 developers, eleven before the migration and eight after the migration, survey 46 developers to triangulate our findings of the interview before the migration, and analyzed the differences in the code reviews made by developers before and after the migration.
We show what benefits and challenges developers experience using the trunk-based model and what they expect from the merge request-based model before the migration. Also, we show the change of motivation for code reviews after the migration. Moreover, quantitative data shows that code reviews are completed faster and with more code comments in the merge request-based model. Finally, we provide the perceptions of developers after the migration.