State‐of‐the‐art: software inspections after 25 years

TLDR

Software inspections, originally developed by Michael Fagan in 1976, have become a widely recognized method for ensuring quality in software projects, with numerous proposals for improvement and empirical studies over the past 25 years. This review paper aims to examine the evolution of software inspection processes since Fagan’s method, summarizing emerging variants and identifying future research directions. The authors analyze experimental studies and key issues related to inspection processes, synthesizing findings to guide future investigations. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract

Abstract Software inspections, which were originally developed by Michael Fagan in 1976, are an important means to verify and achieve sufficient quality in many software projects today. Since Fagan's initial work, the importance of software inspections has been long recognized by software developers and many organizations. Various proposals have been made by researchers in the hope of improving Fagan's inspection method. The proposals include structural changes to the process and several types of support for the inspection process. Most of the proposals have been empirically investigated in different studies. This is a review paper focusing on the software inspection process in the light of Fagan's inspection method and it summarizes and reviews other types of software inspection processes that have emerged in the last 25 years. This paper also addresses important issues related to the inspection process and examines experimental studies and their findings that are of interest with the purpose of identifying future avenues of research in software inspection. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.