An Industrial Case Study to examine a non-traditional Inspection Implementation for Requirements Specifications

• Authors: Oliver Laitenberger;Thomas Beil;Thilo Schwinn
• Venue: METRICS '02 Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Software Metrics
• Year: 2002

Software inspection is one of the key enablers for qualityimprovement and defect cost reduction. Although itsbenefits are shown in many studies, a major obstacle toimplement and use inspection technologies in softwareprojects is the costs associated with it. Companiestherefore constantly ask for the most cost-effectiveinspection implementation. Answering this questionrequires a discussion about the design of the inspectionprocess as well as the question of how the selected processactivities are to be performed. As a consequence, thetailored process and activities often result in an inspectionimplementation that perfectly fits into a project orenvironment but is different to the traditional onespresented in the existing inspection literature.In this paper, we present and examine a non-traditionalinspection implementation at DaimlerChrysler AG. Thedesign of this inspection approach evolved over time aspart of a continuous improvement effort and thereforeintegrates specific issues of the project environment as wellas recent research findings. In addition to the descriptionof the inspection approach, the paper presents quantitativeresults to characterize the suggested inspectionimplementation and investigates some of the essentialhypotheses in the inspection area. Both, the technicaldescription as well as its quantitative underpinning servesas an example for other companies that pursueimprovement or adaptation efforts in the softwareinspection area.