Adapting Inspections to the Twenty-first Century

The global workforce is here to stay. Project teams are spread across multiple time zones with few or no overlapping workday hours. When team members are located in Australia, China, India, Europe, and across all US time zones, it becomes unrealistic to hold the team meeting part of the inspection process. So, how can we adapt team meetings to our global reality?

Before we change a working process to meet the new environment, we need to know how and why it works in the current environment. To fully under­stand the problem, we need to look at why the team meeting was included in the inspection process. Why not just dis­tribute the work product, have people review it, and gather comments?

Twentieth Century Process
The team meeting in the inspection process has evolved into two variants, often denoted as the Fagan method [1] and the Gilb method . [2] In the Fagan method, after individual preparation, the team meets to read through the work product, noting and recording defects. In the Gilb method, after indi­vidual preparation, the team meets to record defects without reading the work product. In both methods, team con­sensus (ideally) results in an agreed upon defect list for the author to fix, with rela­tively few open issues. There have been numerous analyses of the effectiveness and efficiency of the contrasting meeting methods, but my experience has been that either method works—as long as you pay attention to the fundamental re­quirements of the process.

However, when you consider that the number one reason inspections become ineffective is the lack of adequate indi­vidual preparation, the team meeting in the Fagan method provides a safety net. The reading of the work product slows the review rate and allows the team to find many of the defects that would have been noted in individual prepara­tion. Additionally, those team members who consistently do not identify defects in the team meeting are subject to some amount of peer pressure to improve their performance. In either method there is a process step that calls for the moderator to postpone the inspection until suffi­cient preparation effort has been spent.

Adapting to the Twenty-first Century
Considering the above points, we can build a list of requirements that enable inspections across multiple time zones without the need for a face-to-face or teleconferenced team meeting.

1. Record potential defects found by each team member
2. Record effort spent by each team member
3. Replace the “consensus” step in the team meeting
4. Maintain the peer pressure that exists in the current method

 There are commercially available tools as well as proprietary tools that help us accomplish these requirements. Let’s look at the steps involved with using these tools to aid in inspections.

1. Record each potential defect and its location in the work product to allow for sorting and identifi­cation of duplicate defects. Satis­fies requirement: A
2. Record the person identifying the defect and effort spent. Satisfies requirements: B, D
3. Note whether the defect severity is “major,” “minor,” or “issue.” (Issue is often allowed as a choice when the reviewer cannot de­termine the impact.) Satisfies re­quirements: A
4. Describe the defect. Satisfies re­quirements: A, C
5. Optionally, hide the defect list until all inspectors have com­pleted their preparation, so the moderator can make all defects visible for team review. Satisfies requirement: D
6. Include an “accept,” “reject,” or “duplicate” disposition by the au­thor. Satisfies requirement: C
7. Insert a resolution field to de­scribe the fix (or reason for re­jecting the defect) and the reply by the defect originator if he does not agree with the rejection. Sat­isfies requirement: C
8. Provide a closed indicator. Satis­fies requirement: C

Steps one through