Information Communication Technology Tools for Software Review and Verification

While information communication technology (ICT) can be considered a well-established discipline, software development projects are still prone to failure. Even if a software project is not classified as a failure, the general level of software quality leaves room for much improvement. It has been suggested that one of the most prevalent and costly mistakes made in software projects today is deferring the activity of detecting and correcting software problems until the end of the project. Hence, the cost of rework in the later stages of a project can be greater than 100 times the project costs. About 80% of avoidable rework comes from 20% of defects. As a result, techniques such as software review for improving software quality are important. Software review (inspection/verification) was originally introduced by Fagan (1976). The review process essentially includes six major steps: 1. Planning: Organize and prepare the software review, typically for preparing the review materials and review procedure, forming review team and scheduling review meeting, selecting review participants, and assigning roles. 2. Overview: Author explains overall scope and the purpose of the review. 3. Individual preparation: Individual reviewers analyze and review the software artefact. 4. Group review meeting: Find errors, sometimes also called “logging meeting.” Review teams correct and the reader summarizes the work. 5. Rework: Defect correction, which involves the author in resolving problems by reviewing, revising, and correcting the identified defect or by decreasing the existence of errors of the software artefact. 6. Follow-up: Validate the correction quality and decide if re-inspection is required