Investigating the cost-effectiveness of reinspections in software development

  • Authors:

  • Stefan Biffl;Bernd Freimut;Oliver Laitenberger

  • Affiliations:

  • Institute for Software Technology, Vienna University of Technology, Karlsplatz 13, A-1040 Vienna, Austria;Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering, Sauerwiesen 6, D-67661 Kaiserlautern, Germany;Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering, Sauerwiesen 6, D-67661 Kaiserlautern, Germany

  • Venue:
  • ICSE '01 Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

Software inspection is one of the most effective methods to detect defects. Reinspection repeats the inspection process for software products that are suspected to contain a significant number of undetected defects after an initial inspection. As a reinspection is often believed to be less efficient than an inspection an important question is whether a reinspection justifies its cost.In this paper we propose a cost-benefit model for inspection and reinspection. We discuss the impact of cost and benefit parameters on the net gain of a reinspection with empirical data from an experiment in which 31 student teams inspected and reinspected a requirements document.Main findings of the experiment are: a) For reinspection benefits and net gain were significantly lower than for the initial inspection. Yet, the reinspection yielded a positive net gain for most teams with conservative cost-benefit assumptions. b) Both the estimated benefits and number of major defects are key factors for reinspection net gain, which emphasizes the need for appropriate estimation techniques.