Software inspections-theory, new approaches and an experiment

M. Pagan (1976) published his seminal paper on inspections of software development documents. He argued that one should not wait until testing, but suggested to perform formal inspections of all documents in the development process as soon as they became ready. Although it can be demonstrated that inspections offer a high return on investment they do not receive the wide-spread use they deserve, partially due to some inherent problems of inspections. After introducing the concepts of inspections we discuss the general return of investment chapter. We especially discuss the causes of inefficiency found in inspections. This triggers the question of modernizing inspections. We discuss the questionable issue of synergy in inspection meetings and ways to change the performance of inspections, especially in view of modern technology. We conclude with identifying one inspection type which seems most promising.