Inspection (Peer Reviews)

Delivery: 1 or 2-day workshop or onsite coaching


Are errors getting in the way of your product development? Many organizations spend 25-75% of their resources on rework. Rework is expensive and causes delays. Buggy products hurt the company's image every day.

Inspections are small team sessions designed to find defects in any code and documentation. Our inspection process concentrates on finding defects quickly, cost-effectively and early in the development process *.

An inspection differs from a walkthrough or review in that it eliminates personality conflicts and keeps unnecessary verbal exchanges to a minimum. The result is a process that is much faster, friendlier, more efficient and far less intimidating.

Inspection also provides you with statistical data on defects and improvements, allowing you to measure and record efficiency. (See example inspection results.)

This process meets the criteria for Peer Reviews in the SEI CMMI.


"The Inspection course has been successfully adopted by our software organization of approximately 120. The inspection process concentrates on finding defects in an efficient and non-emotional way. It is straightforward, easy to assimilate, and can quickly be implemented."

Mike Wood, Development Manager, Xerox, California.


"Inspections are an important part of our software verification activities at Medtronic. The Process Group has provided the training we need to assure effective inspections. We have been very pleased with the classes they have taught."

Sherman Eagles, Technical Fellow, Medtronic, Minnesota.

"The Inspection course provided by The Process Group was excellent. It had the right mix of theory and practical exercises."

Cindy Tutt, Computing Devices Canada, Ontario.


THE BENEFITS OF THIS WORKSHOP

During this two-day workshop you will learn how to implement and moderate inspections.

After completing this workshop, you will be ready to start conducting inspections and realizing the following benefits immediately:

Find defects in products before they become problems

  • focus staff on finding defects early, rather than at the end of product development
  • stop wasting time on unnecessary product fixes so you can work on new development

Avoid the personality conflicts associated with reviews and walkthroughs

  • avoid wasted time
  • avoid the natural defensiveness on the part of the author

Monitor the efficiency of your inspections

  • use objective criteria to record the time and costs you've saved
  • use simple metrics to determine product quality

Stop repeating the same mistakes

  • reduce future errors through root-cause analysis
  • trap common errors during development

WORKSHOP AGENDA




Inspection results

In our inspection class, students bring a variety of documents and code to inspect. On their first attempt, students typically observe the following results:

* 37 critical or major defects per Thousand Lines of Non-commented Source Code (KLOC).

* 3.3 critical or major defects per effort-hour expended in the inspection process. In comparison, testing typically finds 0.3 defects per effort-hour expended in test. This is an 11X improvement.

* 4 critical or major defects per page for designs, plans and specifications.

When teams inspect code, 57% of them find, on average, between 6 and 12 critical defects per KLOC. In many cases, the code has already been tested and shipped. Critical defects include memory leaks, incorrect variable names, logic errors and incorrect path names. These defects are difficult to find in test.


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* This workshop was originally developed for software project teams. It has been used successfully for IT, systems and hardware projects.

 

THE PROCESS GROUP

The Process Group principals have experience in conducting Inspection workshops for companies in the U.S., Canada, India and Japan. We are authorized SEI appraisal leaders and provide consulting services that enable you to operate your organization more efficiently and profitably. We also offer public speaking engagements that help management and employees understand the various techniques for--and benefits of--improving the development process.


© The Process Group