Investigating the impact of reading techniques on the accuracy of different defect content estimation techniques

Software inspections have established an impressive track record for early defect detection and correction. To increase their benefits, recent research efforts have focused on two different areas: systematic reading techniques and defect content estimation techniques. While reading techniques are to provide guidance for inspection participants on how to scrutinize a software artifact in a systematic manner, defect content estimation techniques aim at controlling and evaluating the inspection process by providing an estimate of the total number of defects in an inspected document. Although several empirical studies have been conducted to evaluate the accuracy of defect content estimation techniques, only few consider the reading approach as an influential factor. The authors examine the impact of two specific reading techniques: a scenario based reading technique and checklist based reading, on the accuracy of different defect content estimation techniques. The examination is based on data that were collected in a large experiment with students of the Vienna University of Technology. The results suggest that the choice of the reading technique has little impact on the accuracy of defect content estimation techniques. Although more empirical work is necessary to corroborate this finding, it implies that practitioners can use defect content estimation techniques without any consideration of their current reading technique.