Impact Analysis of the Inspection Process for Effective Defect Management in Software Development

摘要

A key challenge of the software industry is to engineer software products with minimal post-deployment defects. The two successful approaches of managing defects are defect detection and defect prevention. Inspection has proven to be the most mature, valuable, and competent technique in this challenging area. An awareness of the effective implementation of inspection activity serves to be one of the best practices in the software development process. This article is an empirical analysis of various projects across several service-based and product-based software organizations. The study indicates the impact of several parameters on the effectiveness of inspection activity. These parameters include the number of inspectors, inspection time, preparation time, experience level, and skill of inspectors. An empirical analysis of the data enables one to introduce a range of Dl values chart and variation-analysis chart. This article introduces a process metric-depth of inspection (Dl-and a people metric-inspection performance metric (IPM)-to quantify the effectiveness of the inspection process and the people enabling the process. The study suggests the desirable ranges of Dl and IPM, and the experience level of inspectors to achieve a 90-percent or greater rate of defect-free product. The introduction of these metrics reflects a continual process of improvement and success level of the organization. These metrics will further pave the way for the stakeholders to have a deep visibility into the process and thereby justify the developmental cost. The article further recommends that management within the software community emphasize environmental conditions and motivational factors for enhancing the skills of inspectors.