Practical Code Inspection for Object- Oriented Systems
This paper describes a series of three empirical studies devoted to the development of a rigorous approach for effective inspections of object-oriented (OO) code. Since the time that inspections were developed they have been shown to be powerful defect detection strategies. However, little research has been done to investigate their application to OO systems, which have very different structural and execution models compared to procedural systems. This suggests that inspection techniques may not be currently being deployed to their best effect in the context of large-scale OO systems. The studies reveal three significant issues that need to be addressed-the identification of chunks of code to be inspected, the order in which the code is read, and the resolution of frequent non local references. The sequence of experiments builds up a complement of three techniques: one based on a checklist, one focussed on constructing abstract specifications, and the last centred on the route that a use-case takes through a system. It is demonstrated that the checklist is the most effective approach but that the other techniques also have strengths and so for the best results in a practical situation a combination of techniques is recommended.