Distributed, collaborative software inspection - IEEE ... - GroupLens

DISTRIBUTED, COLIABORATIVE SOFTWARE INSPECTION An inspection system that supports a structured meeting model lets participants work from separate locations and provides easy-tmaintain on-line inspection material. VAHID MASHAYEKHI JANET M. DRAKE WEI-TEK TSAl JOHN RIEDL University of Minnesotu at Minneapolis

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Despite its problems and expense, innspection -a detailed review of a small amount of material by technically com- spection has proved cost-effective, bepetent peers -is an effective method for cause participants uncover faults before detecting faults in software documents they propagate to the next phase of the life and code. Barry Boehm included inspec- cycle. The cost-effectivenessof inspection tion in his list of the 10 most important would be improved even further by a disapproaches for improving s o h a r e quality tributed, collaborative meeting environbecause, according to his research, it ment that eliminates the need for face-tocatches 60 percent of the faults.’ Not only face meetings. In t h ~ article, s we present an inspection do peers working together find more faults, they also find more serious faults than environment that lets geographically distributed inspection participants “meet” the software’s producer alone can find.* Inspection normally involves four to six with people in other cities through workpeople, so it is costly. Besides setting aside stations a t their desks. The current version time for the meeting, participants must of all material is accessible on-line. hspectravel to the meeting site. Each inspection tion products are created on-line, so seccovers only a small portion of the product, ondary data entry to permanent records is so it takes many meetings to completely not necessary. The inspection informainspect a software product. These logistics tion is also available for review and memcs can make inspection a bottleneck in the collection. Our environment’s automated supsoftware-engineeringprocess. -

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port adds structure and consistency to the tive aspects of the target material. In inspection process, helping participants Humphrey’s technique, each reviewer achieve the consistent and uniform review creates a fault list and gives the list to the that the Software En ineering Institute producer of the material before the meetand ”am Humphrey consider crucial ing. The producer correlates the faults and for developing a high-quality software prepares to address the faults in the inspecprocess. Enforcing structure results in a tion meeting. Humphrey’s model also repeatable process and gives measurable adds an optional introductory meeting during which participants review backresults. But how will inspection participants ground material and inspection criteria. CSI lets the inspection team use either react to working in such an environment? IVe designed a case study to compare in- Humphrey’s or Yourdon’s inspection spections in our distributive collaborative technique, but in our case study we follow environment with face-to-face meetings. Humphrey’s because it is more structured The results show that meetings using our and provides intermediate results through environment are as effective as face-to- indi\