Surveyed empirical studies on inspection versus testing

This article helps define questions regarding defect detection techniques and presents a survey of empirical studies on testing and inspection techniques. We then interpret the findings in terms of practical use. The term defect always relates to one or more underlying faults in an artifact such as code. In the context of this article, defects map to single faults. Thus, we use the terms defect and fault interchangeably, as have many of the authors whose work we refer to. What influences the choice of method? The choice of defect detection method depends on factors such as the artifacts, the types of defects they contain, who's doing the detection, how it's done, for what purpose, and in which activities. Factors also include which criteria govern the evaluation. These factors show that many variations must be taken into account. When you search the evidence for the the pros and cons of using some defect detection method, you must choose specific levels of these factors to guide the appraisal of empirical evidence. Artifact Which artifact are you assessing? Require-ments? Design? Code? Testing requires an ex-ecutable representation—that is, code—while inspection can apply to any artifact. Most experiments , by necessity, use small, artificial ar-tifacts. Using industrial artifacts improves the study's generalizability but also leads to more confounding factors. What types of defects do the artifacts con-tain? There's a big difference between gram-feature What Do We Know about Defect Detection Methods? D etecting defects in software product development requires serious effort, so it's important to use the most efficient and effective methods. Evidence-based software engineering can help software practitioners decide which methods to use and for what purpose. 1 EBSE involves defining relevant questions, surveying and appraising available empirical evidence, and integrating and evaluating new practices in the target environment. A survey of defect detection studies comparing inspection and testing techniques yields practical recommendations: use inspections for requirements and design defects, and use testing for code.