Structured Inspections of Code

Cleanroom programming and code inspections independently provide evidence that it is more eecient to postpone the testing of code to a later stage than is usually done. This paper argues that an additional gain in quality and eeciency of development can be obtained by structuring inspections by means of an inspection protocol. The written part of such a protocol is prepared by the programmer before the inspection. It is modelled on Floyd's method for the veriication of owcharts. However, the protocol diiers from Floyd's method in being applicable in practice. Structured inspections gain this advantage by not attempting to be a proof ; they are no more than an articulation of existing forms of inspection. With the usual method of structured programming it may be diicult to prepare the inspection protocol. On the other hand, Assertion-Driven Programming (of which an example is included in this paper) not only facilitates protocol preparation, but also the coding itself.