Does active guidance improve software inspections? A preliminary empirical study

Inspections are an established quality assurance technique. In order to optimize the inspection approach, different reading techniques, such as checklist-based reading and scenario-based reading have been proposed. Various experiments have been performed to evaluate which of these techniques produces better inspection results (i.e., finds more defects with less effort). However, results of these empirical investigations are not conclusive. Thus, the success factors of reading approaches need to be further analyzed. In this paper, we report on a preliminary empirical study that examined the influence of active involvement (provided by scenario based approaches) of the inspectors on the inspector’s efficiency and effectiveness. First results show tendencies that active guidance can improve the effectiveness of inspectors and is a useful means during defect detection.