Abstract
Successful management of any process requires planning, measurement, and control. In programming development, these requirements translate into defining the programming process in terms of a series of operations, each operation having its own exit criteria. Next there must be some means of measuring completeness of the product at any point of its development by inspections or testing. And finally, the measured data must be used for controlling the process. This approach is not only conceptually interesting, but has been applied successfully in several programming projects embracing systems and applications programming, both large and small. It has not been found to “get in the way” of programming, but has instead enabled higher predictability than other means, and the use of inspections has improved productivity and product quality. The purpose of this paper is to explain the planning, measurement, and control functions as they are affected by inspections in programming terms.
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Cited References and Footnotes
O. R. Kohli, High-Level Design Inspection Specification, Technical Report TR 21.601, IBM Corporation, Kingston, New York (July 21, 1975).
It should be noted that the exit criteria for I1 (design complete where one design statement is estimated to represent 3 to 10 code instructions) and I2 (first clean code compilations) are checkpoints in the development process through which every programming project must pass.
The Hawthorne Effect is a psychological phenomenon usually experienced in human-involved productivity studies. The effect is manifested by participants producing above normal because they know they are being studied.
NCSS (Non-Commentary Source Statements), also referred to as “Lines of Code,” are the sum of executable code instructions and declaratives. Instructions that invoke macros are counted once only. Expanded macroinstructions are also counted only once. Comments are not included.
Basically in a walk-through, program design or code is reviewed by a group of people gathered together at a structured meeting in which errors/issues pertaining to the material and proposed by the participants may be discussed in an effort to find errors. The group may consist of various participants but always includes the originator of the material being reviewed who usually plans the meeting and is responsible for correcting the errors. How it differs from an inspection is pointed out in Tables 2 and 3.
Marketing Newsletter, Cross Application Systems Marketing, “Program inspections at Aetna,” MS-76-006, S2, IBM Corporation, Data Processing Division, White Plains, New York (March 29, 1976).
J. Ascoly, M. J. Cafferty, S. J. Gruen, and O. R. Kohli, Code Inspection Specification, Technical Report TR 21.630, IBM Corporation, Kingston, New York (1976).
N. S. Waldstein, The Walk-Thru-A Method of Specification, Design and Review, Technical Report TR 00.2536, IBM Corporation, Poughkeepsie, New York (June 4, 1974).
Independent study programs: IBM Structured Programming Textbook, SR20-7149-1, IBM Structured Programming Workbook, SR20-7150-0, IBM Corporation, Data Processing Division, White Plains, New York.
General References
J. D. Aron, The Program Development Process: Part 1: The Individual Programmer, Structured Programs, 137–141, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Reading, Massachusetts (1974).
M. E. Fagan, Design and Code Inspections and Process Control in the Development of Programs, Technical Report TR 00.2763, IBM Corporation, Poughkeepsie, New York (June 10, 1976). This report is a revision of the author’s Design and Code Inspections and Process Control in the Development of Programs, Technical Report TR 21.572, IBM Corporation, Kingston, New York (December 17, 1974).
O. R. Kohli and R. A. Radice, Low-Level Design Inspection Specification, Technical Report TR 21.629. IBM Corporation, Kingston, New York (1976).
R. R. Larson, Test Plan and Test Case Inspection Specifications, Technical Report TR 21.586, IBM Corporation, Kingston, New York (April 4, 1975).
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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Fagan, M.E. (2001). Design and Code Inspections to Reduce Errors in Program Development. In: Broy, M., Denert, E. (eds) Pioneers and Their Contributions to Software Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-48354-7_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-48354-7_13
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