Software development is constrained by time, cost and quality requirements. Software defects are one of the most influential factors affecting the success of a software project. Software inspection has become an essential solution for managing software defects. A variety of software inspection techniques have been developed. Traditionally, software inspections are performed manually and require meeting-based activities. New inspection techniques have challenged the conventions by eliminating the defect collection meeting. The original asynchronous software inspection consists of private and public reviews, and it has been proven as effective as traditional ones. Different kinds of computer technologies are used to augment the software inspection process. This study empirically examined the effects of annotations of shared defect detection in asynchronous software inspection in which the private review is absent and all annotations are visible to members of the inspection team at all times. A Latin square experimental design was employed, and twenty-seven novices participated in the experiment as inspector subjects. The study results show that the defect discovery ratio is not affected by the number of annotations in the target materials under inspection. Thus, the study suggests that defect detection task and defect review task can be combined without loss. This basic finding of this research supports the proposition that more flexible focus of software inspection (i.e. asynchronous and shared annotation) may be adopted without negative impacts on defect detection. The analysis study also addresses additional issues related to software inspection, augmentation, cognition, and research design.
Computer supported software inspection has proven as effective as manual (traditional) inspection. Asynchronous software inspections have shown to be more economical than synchronous ones by streamlining inspection processes through the use of computer technology. However, there is still disagreement among benefits of meetingless software inspection. Also, asynchronous software inspection process can be reengineered to be more flexible and economical. Guided by four design principles - augmentaion, visualization, informating, and substitution - CASCADE (1998) was developed to augment commenting and review on electronic documents. CASCADE offers a number of notable features including, placement of annotations at specific locations, color coded labeling, flexible comment classifications, and navigational tools. With minor reorganization and a few enhancements, CASCADE can serve as a testbed for asynchronous software inspection research.
Email: Bordin Sapsomboon