Efficient management of inspections in software development projects

During the last two decades a universal agreement has been established on the fact that software inspections play a fundamental role in improving software quality. The number of software organizations that have incorporated formal reviews in their development process is constantly increasing and the belief that efficient inspections can not only detect defects but also reduce cycle time and lower costs is spreading. However, despite the importance of the inspections in a software development project, scheduling of inspections has not been given the necessary attention so far. As a result, inspections tend to accumulate towards internal project deadlines, possibly leading to excess overtime costs, quality degradation and difficulties in meeting milestones. In this paper, data from a major telecommunications software project is analyzed in an effort to illustrate the problems that can arise from inefficient planning of inspections and their related activities.