reviews & inspections

Articles

Don't Believe Everything You Read!
There are volumes of written material covering just about every aspect of software engineering. Books, articles, magazines, conference proceedings, Web sites, and other rich sources of information are readily available to those learning about our profession. However, based on personal experience and observation, Ed Weller is compelled to ask how much of this information is actually misinformation. Anytime you collect data you must proceed with caution! In this article, we'll find out why Ed questions validity and accuracy and what you can do next time you're faced with questionable material.
An Ounce of Goat or a Pound of Hero: Software Reviews and Inspections
Being a hero is great, but only if your heroism doesn't involve a situation you could have avoided in the first place. In this week's column, Harry Robinson explains that goats are to forest fires as early detection tools are to the software development process. There is a lesson about software reviews and inspections in this comparison that testers and project heroes can benefit from.
Calculating the Economics of Software Inspections
Without return on investment (ROI) calculations for the software inspections process, you cannot know the true benefit of those inspections. In this article, Ed Weller makes some assumptions about the cost of inspections and tries to estimate the savings from reduced test cost. He also provides a spreadsheet for doing "what-if" analysis of different savings based on inspection effectiveness, and how much defect removal in test might cost.
Don't Forget the Losses

Starting a new way of doing things implies ending the old. People may accept that as obvious, but they often forget that endings bring with them losses. Using an example about adopting software inspections, Lee Copeland urges organizations to acknowledge the losses people experience when they leave the familiar behind.

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