Focusing Testing by Using Inspection and Product Metrics

A well-known approach for identifying defect-prone parts of software in order to focus testing is to use different kinds of product metrics such as size or complexity. Although this approach has been evaluated in many contexts, the question remains if there are further opportunities to improve test focusing. One idea is to identify other types of information that may indicate the location of defect- prone software parts. Data from software inspections, in particular, appear to be promising. This kind of data might already lead to software parts that have inherent difficulties or programming challenges, and in consequence might be defect-prone. This article first explains how inspection and product metrics can be used to focus testing activities. Second, we compare selected product and inspection metrics commonly used to predict defect-prone parts. Based on initial experience from two case studies performed in different environments, the suitability of different metrics for predicting defect-prone parts is illustrated. The studies revealed that inspection defect data seems to be a suitable predictor, and a combination of certain inspection and product metrics led to the best prioritizations in our contexts. In addition, qualitative experience is presented.Peer reviewe

Investigation of individual factors impacting the effectiveness of requirements inspections: a replicated experiment

Abstract This paper presents a replication of an empirical study regarding the impact of individual factors on the effectiveness of requirements inspections. Experimental replications are important for verifying results and investigating the generality of empirical studies. We utilized the lab package and procedures from the original study, with some changes and additions, to conduct the replication with 69 professional developers in three different companies in Turkey. In general the results of the replication were consistent with those of the original study. The main result from the original study, which is supported in the replication, was that inspectors whose degree is in a field related to software engineering are less effective during a requirements inspection than inspectors whose degrees are in other fields. In addition, we found that Company, Experience, and English Proficiency impacted inspection effectiveness

Análisis de la adopción y uso de las revisiones de software

Incluye bibliografía.El trabajo aborda un tema de indudable relevancia científica, tanto teórica como práctica: el análisis de la adopción y el uso de las revisiones de software