A Comparison of Tool-Based and Paper-Based Software Inspection

Software inspection is an e ective method of defect detection. Recent research activity has considered the development of tool support to further increase the e ciency and e ectiveness of inspection, resulting in a number of prototype tools being developed. However, no comprehensive evaluations of these tools have been carried out to determine their e ectiveness in comparison with traditional paper-based inspection. This issue must be addressed if tool-supported inspection is to become an accepted alternative to, or even replace, paper-based inspection. This paper describes a controlled experiment comparing the e ectiveness of tool-supported software inspection with paper-based inspection, using a new prototype software inspection tool known as ASSIST Asynchronous Synchronous Software Inspection Support Tool. 43 students used ASSIST and paper-based inspection to inspect two C++ programs of approximately 150 lines. The subjects performed both individual inspection and a group collect...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 1998
• Where: ESE
• Authors: F. MacDonald, J. Miller
• Keywords: Database, ESE 1998, Inspection, Paper-based Inspection, Software Inspection