A computational framework for supporting software inspections

Software inspections improve software quality by the analysis of software artifacts, detecting their defects for removal before these artifacts are delivered to the following software life cycle activities. Some knowledge regarding software inspections have been acquired by empirical studies. However, we found no indication that computational support for the whole software inspection process using appropriately such knowledge is available. This paper describes a computational framework whose requirements set was derived from knowledge acquired by empirical studies to support software inspections. To evaluate the feasibility of such framework, two studies have been accomplished: one case study, which has shown the feasibility of using the framework to support inspections, and an experimental study that evaluated the supported software inspection planning activity. Preliminary results of this experimental study suggested that unexperienced subjects are able to plan inspections with higher defect detection effectiveness, and in less time, when using this computational framework.