A WWW-based tool for software inspection

Abstract

Software inspections, although demonstrated to be effective, have some notable drawbacks, especially when the inspection team is geographically scattered, making it difficult or even impossible to arrange meetings. A few computer tools have been introduced to deal with such problems and to ensure cost-effectiveness. Our approach to solving this problem is based on the World Wide Web which is a truly global, easy-to-use environment in which to construct such a tool. The WIP tool introduced provides a set of functions for distributing the document to be inspected, annotating it, searching related documents, choosing the checklist and gathering inspection statistics. Evaluation of the tool indicated that despite some minor deficiencies it was well liked. The idea of online commenting was pleasant and the elimination of tangling with a variety of paper documents and reports made the inspection more effective. Many test users liked the simple statistics and the tool was easy to learn and use.