EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF TIME ALLOCATION PROCEDURE FOR TECHNICAL REVIEWS

This paper proposes a new procedure for time allocation to technical r eview of software products. The procedure designed is based on an expe rienced knowledge that the lower the quality of a product, the higher the effort needed for reviewing it. In order to identify the low quali ty products, we use the idea of sampling inspection which is popular f or quality inspection of manufactured goods. The proposed procedure co nsists of the following three steps: (1) each member of a team chooses any one of the products developed by himself or herself, (2) all memb ers of the team jointly review the selected products and identify faul ts, and (3) review time for each product is determined based on both t he number of faults detected in (2) and the size of the product. In th e proposed procedure, step (3) is implemented by constructing a check list to be used in technical reviews such that the number of items in the check list is dynamically specified according to both the number o f faults identified and the size of the product. Moreover, we apply th e proposed procedure to software development projects in a certain ind ustrial environment. The analysis results of experimental data collect ed from software developments show the usefulness of the proposed proc edure. (C) 1996 by Elsevier Science Inc.