• Each hour spent on quality assurance activities such as design reviews saves 3 to 10 hours in downstream costs.
• A requirement defect that is left undetected until construction or maintenance will cost 50 to 200 times as much to fix as it would cost to fix at requirements time.

Inspections are detailed technical peer reviews of software designs or implementations. We conduct inspections at every stage of the development or maintenance process. Because of their ability to detect and correct defects in upstream work products, inspections help us control the cost and schedule of the project. In addition to inspections of new product elements, we inspect every change that gets made. We also re-inspect the work products when there is substantial change activity or when inspection and test results indicate unusual problems.

Example Code Inspection Objectives

1. Identify design errors in the product
2. Identify the cases in which the code does not implement the design as intended
3. Identify any improper use of interfaces
4. Inspect for adherence to re-usability considerations
5. Inspect for adherence to appropriate style guidelines and standards or constraints such as naming, commenting, and performance limitations
6. Verify that previously identified issues have been resolved

• Inspections
• Component Reuseability
• Change Control Board
• Nightly Build and Smoke Test
• Top Ten Risk List