An Empirical Investigation of a Systematic Object-Oriented Inspection Technique

Software inspection is a well-recognised defect detection technique, but recent research has highlighted that its level of performance on object-oriented code may be suffering due to the highly delocalised nature of the software. This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation, which compared the traditional ad-hoc inspection approach with a systematic, abstraction-driven inspection technique, designed to help with the problem of delocalisation. The results showed no significant difference in relation to defect detection performance between the use of the ad-hoc and systematic inspection techniques. However, the systematic technique did seem to encourage a deeper understanding of the code being inspected and may also help discover different defects from the ad-hoc approach. Inspectors also seemed to appreciate the rigour that the systematic technique imposed. This paper suggests that a systematic, abstraction-driven reading strategy offers some potential but that issues regarding the difference between the static and dynamic views of object-oriented code, as well supporting the efficient construction of abstractions needs to be addressed.