Article

Investigating the cost-effectiveness of reinspections in software development

Authors:

Oliver LaitenbergerAuthors Info & Claims

ICSE '01: Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Software Engineering

Pages 155 - 164

Published: 01 July 2001 Publication History

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Abstract

Software inspection is one of the most effective methods to detect defects. Reinspection repeats the inspection process for software products that are suspected to contain a significant number of undetected defects after an initial inspection. As a reinspection is often believed to be less efficient than an inspection an important question is whether a reinspection justifies its cost.

In this paper we propose a cost-benefit model for inspection and reinspection. We discuss the impact of cost and benefit parameters on the net gain of a reinspection with empirical data from an experiment in which 31 student teams inspected and reinspected a requirements document.

Main findings of the experiment are: a) For reinspection benefits and net gain were significantly lower than for the initial inspection. Yet, the reinspection yielded a positive net gain for most teams with conservative cost-benefit assumptions. b) Both the estimated benefits and number of major defects are key factors for reinspection net gain, which emphasizes the need for appropriate estimation techniques.

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Cited By

Biffl SKalinowski MWinkler DMartínez-Fernández SGalster MBueno da Silva FCiolkowski M(2018)Towards an experiment line on software inspection with human computationProceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Conducting Empirical Studies in Industry10.1145/3193965.3193971(21-24)Online publication date: 28-May-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3193965.3193971
Mandala NWalia GCarver JNagappan NRuneson PHöst MMendes EAndrews AHarrison R(2012)Application of kusumoto cost-metric to evaluate the cost effectiveness of software inspectionsProceedings of the ACM-IEEE international symposium on Empirical software engineering and measurement10.1145/2372251.2372291(221-230)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2372251.2372291
Feather MNikora AHeitmeyer CMead NClarke LDillon LTichy W(2003)ICSE 2003 workshop on Software Engineering for High Assurance SystemsProceedings of the 25th International Conference on Software Engineering10.5555/776816.776951(787-788)Online publication date: 3-May-2003
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/776816.776951
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Investigating the cost-effectiveness of reinspections in software development
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Project and people management
      2. Software management
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software development process management
    2. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. Software configuration management and version control systems

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cover image ACM Conferences

ICSE '01: Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Software Engineering

July 2001

844 pages

ISBN:0769510507

Chairman:
Hausi A. Müller
Univ. of Victoria, Canada

Copyright © Copyright (c) 2001 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. All rights reserved.

Sponsors

SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering

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IEEE Computer Society

United States

Publication History

Published: 01 July 2001

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ICSE01

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SIGSOFT

ICSE01: 23rd International Conference on Software Engineering

May 12 - 19, 2001

Ontario, Toronto, Canada

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ICSE '01 Paper Acceptance Rate 47 of 268 submissions, 18%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 276 of 1,856 submissions, 15%

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Cited By

Biffl SKalinowski MWinkler DMartínez-Fernández SGalster MBueno da Silva FCiolkowski M(2018)Towards an experiment line on software inspection with human computationProceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Conducting Empirical Studies in Industry10.1145/3193965.3193971(21-24)Online publication date: 28-May-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3193965.3193971
Mandala NWalia GCarver JNagappan NRuneson PHöst MMendes EAndrews AHarrison R(2012)Application of kusumoto cost-metric to evaluate the cost effectiveness of software inspectionsProceedings of the ACM-IEEE international symposium on Empirical software engineering and measurement10.1145/2372251.2372291(221-230)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2372251.2372291
Feather MNikora AHeitmeyer CMead NClarke LDillon LTichy W(2003)ICSE 2003 workshop on Software Engineering for High Assurance SystemsProceedings of the 25th International Conference on Software Engineering10.5555/776816.776951(787-788)Online publication date: 3-May-2003
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/776816.776951
Biffl SHalling M(2003)Investigating the Defect Detection Effectiveness and Cost Benefit of Nominal Inspection TeamsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2003.119906929:5(385-397)Online publication date: 1-May-2003
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TSE.2003.1199069
Halling MBiffl SGrünbacher P(2003)An economic approach for improving requirements negotiation models with inspectionRequirements Engineering10.1007/s00766-002-0155-88:4(236-247)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2003
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00766-002-0155-8
Dinkelacker JGarg PMiller RNelson DTracz WMagee JYoung M(2002)Progressive open sourceProceedings of the 24th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/581339.581363(177-184)Online publication date: 19-May-2002
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/581339.581363
Rus IBiffl SHalling MTortora GChang S(2002)Systematically combining process simulation and empirical data in support of decision analysis in software developmentProceedings of the 14th international conference on Software engineering and knowledge engineering10.1145/568760.568901(827-833)Online publication date: 15-Jul-2002
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/568760.568901
Hallin MGrünbacher PBiffl S(2001)Tailoring a COTS Group Support System for Software Requirements InspectionProceedings of the 16th IEEE international conference on Automated software engineering10.5555/872023.872537Online publication date: 26-Nov-2001
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/872023.872537

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