Investigating the impact of reading techniques on the accuracy of different defect content estimation techniques

Software inspections have established an impressive track record for early defect detection and correction. To increase their benefits, recent researc h efforts have focused on two different areas: systematic reading technique s and defect content estimation techniques. While reading techniques are to provide guidance for inspection participants on how to scrutinize a softwa re artifact in a systematic manner, defect content estimation techniques ai m at controlling and evaluating the inspection process by providing an esti mate of the total number of defects in an inspected document. Although seve ral empirical studies have been conducted to evaluate the accuracy of defec t content estimation techniques, only few consider the reading approach as an influential factor. In this paper we examine the impact of two specific reading techniques - a scenario-based reading technique and checklist-based reading - on the accur acy of different defect content estimation techniques. The examination is b ased on data that were collected in a large experiment with students of the Vienna University of Technology. The results suggest that the choice of th e reading technique has little impact on the accuracy of defect content est imation techniques. Although more empirical work is necessary to corroborat e this finding, it implies that practitioners can use defect content estima tion techniques without any consideration of their current reading techniqu e.