Modern Software Review: Techniques and Technologies

Abstract

Preface An Introduction to the Subject Area

High quality software is of vital importance for the survival and success of companies where many manual tasks are now automated through software, which can provide increased speed, accuracy, assurance, reliability, robustness, and productivity. Software is often a key component of companies' strategic plans for gaining and sustaining competitive advantage. A single undetected error or omission during the software development process could have disastrous consequences during operation. Software errors and omissions can also lead to undesirable outcomes such as reduced customer satisfaction, increased maintenance costs and/ or decreased productivity and profits.

Although information technology can be considered a well-established discipline, software projects are still prone to failure. Even when a software project is not classified as a failure, the general level of software quality leaves much room for improvement. Software review or inspection is one of the important techniques for improving software quality.

In the last thirty years, software reviews have been recommended as one of the most cost effective quality assurance techniques in software process improvements and are widely used in industrial practice. The goal of software review is to improve the quality of the product by reviewing interim deliverables during design and development. It is defined as a "non-execution-based [technique] for scrutinizing software products for defects, deviations from development standards". Most researchers agree that software review is considered the most cost effective technique in cost saving, quality and productivity improvements in software engineering. More specifically, software review can 1) detect defects right through the software development life cycle from concept proposal to implementation to testing; the earlier defects are detected in development, then the easier and less costly they are to remove/correct; and 2) detect defects early in the software development life cycle that are difficult or impossible to detect in later stages; improve learning and communication in the software team, since software development is essentially a human activity.

Overall Objectives and Mission of this Book

The overall objective and mission the proposed book is to provide:

• An understanding of the critical factors affecting software review performance. • Practical guidelines for software reviews.

Readers will gain a deep understanding of current software review literature and theoretical models for analysis software review performance. More specifically, this helps readers to understand the critical input and process factors that drive software review performance. Practical guidelines are drawn from the literature, theoretical models, methodologies, and the results from industry survey and cases studies.

The Scholarly Value of this Book and its Contributions to the Literature in the Information Technology Discipline:

• To increase the understanding of what inputs the typical review process uses in practice. • To identify the key factors influencing software review performance Theoretical models help to understand the important relationships between inputs, process, and performance perspective • The rigorous quantitative industry questionnaire survey and qualitative (case study: in-depth interviews) case studies are contributed to the software review literature. • To provide useful and practical guidelines for organizing and conducting software reviews.

------------- Abstract

Information Technology can be considered a well-established discipline, however, software development projects are still prone to failure. Even if a software project is not classified as a failure, the general level of software quality leaves room for improvement. One of the most prevalent and costly mistakes made in software projects today is deferring the activity of detecting and correcting