An experimental comparison of usage-based and checklist-based reading

Software quality can be defined as the customers´ perception of how a system works. Inspection is a method to monitor and control the quality throughout the development cycle. Reading techniques applied to inspections help reviewers to stay focused on the important parts of an artifact when inspecting. However, many reading techniques focus on finding as many faults as possible, regardless of their importance. Usage-based reading helps reviewers to focus on the most important parts of a software artifact from a user´s point of view. We present an experiment, which compares usage-based and checklist-based reading. The results show that reviewers applying usage-based reading are more efficient and effective in detecting the most critical faults from a user´s point of view than reviewers using checklist-based reading. Usage-based reading may be preferable for software organizations that utilize or start utilizing use cases in their software development.