Software Inspection - Supporting the Process

Previous research has focused on the development and evaluation of a tool that supports a generic software inspection process. This system is known as ASSIST (Asynchronous/Synchronous Software Inspection Support Tool). ASSIST is driven by an inspection process modeling language which is capable of describing and enforcing any current and future inspection process. ASSIST currently supports all phases of the inspection process and supports both individual and group-based phases of inspection. Group-based phases can be performed synchronously or asynchronously, with the choice of same-place or different-place synchronous meetings. Empirical evaluation of ASSIST has demonstrated that basic tool based inspection is as effective at defect detection as manual inspection.

Much of the current (and future) work (in software inspections) focuses on bring additional benefits to software inspectors by new support mechanisms. Specifically, the group is investigating:

A New paradigm for Software Inspection Research
Ensuring Diversity by Team Selection
Auto-Collation of defects from individual inspectors
Developing a defect ontology
Estimating the number of remaining defects
Resolving on-line reading issues in Software Inspections
The document, the inpspector and the support system: an interaction puzzle?