Re: Inspections Was: RE: [AM] ANN: Mashing Deadly Myths

| From: "J. B. Rainsberger" <[email protected]>
| Scott E. Preece wrote:
| 
| > If you argue that a particular piece of code is likely to be worked on
| > more than once in the course of a project, I would point out that that
| > means it would be inspected more than once, too...
| 
| Would it? I have never been on such a project. Have you?
---

Our rule is that ALL code changes are inspected. Inspection is supposed
to involve the changed code plus enough of the code that it depends on
and that depend on it so assure that the change is correct.  We make
consumer products - defects are bet-the-company expensive.  We feel
completely justified in having multiple defect-removal processes in the
lifecycle.

---
| To reiterate, and perhaps more clearly: One study described what 
| happened when /one pair/ of people working with one codebase over a 
| short period of time. The other described the effect of /multiple/ 
| inspectors on a given piece of code. You cannot just compare the numbers 
| from these studies and expect that to mean something.
---

I tried to make clear that the numbers I cited were specific examples
that fall within wider reported ranges.  The ranges represent a lot of
different studies and anecdotes and are impossible to compare directly
(in the Utah study, for instance, the quality improvement was actually
"passed 15% more of the test set", which is not even vaguely the same
thing as "removed 15% more defects").

And, as noted elsewhere, I DO believe both pair programming and
test-first are very good things to do, I just don't believe that they
make inspections unnecessary, where the cost of excaped defects is
high.

scott
-- 
scott preece
motorola urbana design center (il67), 1800 s. oak st., champaign, il  61820  
e-mail:	[email protected]	fax:	217-384-8550
phone:	217-384-8589	cell: 217-433-6114	pager: [email protected]

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