Multimedia groupware for code inspection

ICICLE is a multifaced software system intended to augment the process of formal code inspection. There are two principle phases of code inspection: comment preparation and the code inspection meeting. ICICLE addresses the first phase, comment preparation, by providing a variety of software tools to help individual code inspectors find potential problems, and to record their comments. New ICICLE versions incorporate various media to support distributed work groups and informal code review sessions. The author reports the results of experimentation with various configurations of multiple media and underlying computer communications networks.<>