Asynchronous Software Inspection

Although there exists a multitude of diierent inspection processes, the basic process has remained unchanged since it was rst deened by Fagan in 1976. This process has as its central component an inspection meeting which all participants attend. But is this meeting cost eeective? Recent empirical work has indicated this is not the case. An inspection model and prototype tool that dispense totally with the need for the inspectors to hold face-to-face meetings are presented. They replace the meeting with further individual inspections combined with communication between inspectors facilitated by electronic mail. The model and tool are both compared with other existing work in the area of meet-ingless inspection.