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Technology Industry

High Quality Low Cost Software Inspections

IBM Systems Journal, July, 2003 by Richard J. Hedger

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Chapter 6, "Inspection Data," is extremely important. This chapter should be well understood by all those who are implementing and using software inspections. The chapter is very complete with basic measurement definitions and how to use the data to plan, monitor, and improve the inspection process. Basically, size, effort, cost, and time are measured to provide an analysis about inspection defect density, defect distribution, inspection meeting rate, preparation rate, inspection efficiency, error-prone work products, and inspection effectiveness. Because not everything can be inspected and work needs to be prioritized, in my opinion, the information about error-prone work product analysis is very important for software inspections to be effective in any organization.

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Causal analysis and reinspections are covered in Chapters 7 and 8, respectively. Causal analysis is a defect prevention process that tries to identify the probable cause that led to defects in the first place. It can be used with defects from the inspections to provide learning and to prevent defects from happening over and over. It is an important process improvement exercise. Chapter 8 describes when to reinspect. Defect density, large work products, inspection rate, preparation rate, complexity, and change rate are all among the topics that should be considered when making a reinspection decision. A reinspection checklist that will be helpful to a team making this decision is included.

Inspection economics and management--Chapters 9 through 12. Chapter 9, "Economics of Inspections," is another very important chapter. This chapter covers the costs of inspections and how to determine the return on investment for them. Inspection effectiveness is discussed, as well as the value of inspections in finding defects early in the life cycle, when they can be fixed with significantly less expense than when the defects are found by test or by the customer. Software inspections done properly will save in overall project cost and schedule time primarily by reducing test effort and shortening test schedules.

In Chapters 10, 11, and 12 the topics of managing inspections, practical issues for success, and what to inspect are discussed. Important to inspection success is management commitment, funding, adequate resource, and process management. The author makes an important point that for inspections to be successful an inspection coordinator needs to be appointed to assist in managing the execution of the inspection process. Chapter 11, "Practical Issues for Success," provides answers to the many day-to-day questions that come up when executing a successful inspection process. Examples of issues are: getting off to a good start, do we really need all those data with inspections, and inspections waste time. Chapter 12 describes work products that can be inspected. They include requirements specifications, architecture definitions, high- and low-level designs, and code. Inspections can be applied to any type of work product, and usually the same process will work with a change in the checklist to support the work product being inspected.

Technology Industry

High Quality Low Cost Software Inspections

IBM Systems Journal, July, 2003 by Richard J. Hedger

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