SQA

Software Quality Assurance

2020
SQA

Lecture: 07
Reviews

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 Agenda
SQA

• Introduction
• Cost impact of errors
• Review metrics
• Defect amplification
• Reference model
• Types of reviews
• Review Process
• Review Checklists

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 Reviews
SQA

Software reviews are a filter to the software engineering process.

Purpose: serves to uncover errors in analysis, design, coding, and
testing.

Reviews are applied at various points during software development and

serve to uncover defects that can be removed.

A software review is a way of using a group of people to:

•Point out needed improvements in the product of a single person or
team
•Confirm those parts of the product in which improvement is not desired
•Achieve technical work of more uniform, predicable, and manageable
quality than can be achieved

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 Reviews
SQA

Different types of reviews:

•Informal reviews (informal meeting and informal desk
checking)
•Formal reviews (design to an audience of customers,
management, and staff)
•Walkthrough, inspection, and round-robin reviews
•Static code reviews

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 Reviews
SQA

Why software reviews?

•To err is human

•Easy to catch the errors in engineers’ work

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 Informal reviews
SQA

• Meetings
• Discussions
• Internal decisions
• Emails (sort of)
This is one of the type of review which doesn't follow any
process to find errors in the document. Under this
technique , you just review the document and give
informal comments on it

The most important thing to keep in mind about the informal

reviews is that they are not formally documented.

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 Formal Reviews - FTR
SQA

Formal reviews follow a formal process. It is well structured and

regulated.
•Planning
•Kick-off
•Preparation
•Review meeting - MOM
•Rework
•Follow-up

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 Formal Reviews - FTR
SQA

Objectives of FTR:

•To uncover errors in function, logic, or implementation

•To verify the software under review meets its
requirements
•To ensure that the software has been represented
according to predefined standards
•To develop software in a uniform manner
•To make projects more manageable

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 Formal Reviews
SQA

Planning: The first phase of the formal review is the Planning

phase. The entry criteria are to check that whether the
document/ process is ready to enter the formal review process or
not.
Kick-off:  This kick-off meeting is an optional step in a review
procedure. The goal of this step is to give a short introduction on
the objectives of the review and the documents to everyone in
the meeting. 
Preparation: In this step the reviewers review the document
individually using the related documents, procedures, rules and
checklists provided. Each participant while reviewing individually
identifies the defects, questions and comments according to their
understanding of the document and role

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 Formal Reviews
SQA

Review meeting: The review meeting consists of three phases:

Logging phase
Discussion phase
Decision phase
Rework: In this step if the number of defects found per page
exceeds the certain level then the document has to be reworked.
Not every defect that is found leads to rework.
Follow-up: In this step the moderator check to make sure that
the author has taken action on all known defects

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 Review Guidelines
SQA

• Review the product, not the producer

• Set an agenda and maintain it
• Limit debate and rebuttal
• Enunciate problem areas, but don’t attempt to solve every
problem noted
• Take written notes
• Limit the number of participants and insist upon advance
preparation
• Develop a checklist for each work product that is likely to be
reviewed
• Allocate resources and time schedule for FTRs
• Conduct meaningful training for all reviewers
• Review your early reviews

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 Cost impact of errors
SQA

It varies from error to error, client to client and product to

product.
Rework – billability responsibility
Planning – costing
Regression process cost
The most important of all Client Satisfaction

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Defect Amplification
 What do we look for?
SQA

Errors and defects

Error—a quality problem found before the software is released
to end users
Defect—a quality problem found only after the software has been released to end-
users

Defect (IEEE Standard 610.12-1990)

•A defect in a hardware device or component; for example, a short circuit or
broken wire.
•An incorrect step, process, or data definition in a computer program
However, the temporal distinction made between errors and defects is not
mainstream thinking

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 Defect Amplification and Removal
SQA

A defect amplification model [IBM81] can be used to illustrate

the generation and detection of errors during the design and
code generation actions of a software process

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 Defect Amplification and Removal
SQA
Hypothetical example of defect amplification for a software
development process in which no reviews are conducted
Each test step uncovers and corrects 50 percent of all incoming
errors without introducing any new errors.
Ten preliminary design defects are amplified to 94 errors before
testing commences.

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 Defect Amplification and Removal
SQA

Department of Computer Science

GC University Lahore
Muhammad Jahanzaib Khan
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 Defect Amplification and Removal
SQA

Same conditions except that design and code reviews are

conducted as part of each development step
Ten initial preliminary design errors are amplified to 24 errors
before testing commences

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 Defect Amplification and Removal
SQA

Department of Computer Science

GC University Lahore
Muhammad Jahanzaib Khan
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 Reference model
SQA

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 Review Process
SQA

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 Rev iewed
Product Documents
Documents

Review Process

Product Documents Rules/

Checklist

Entry Exit
Planning/
Preparation Inspection Rework
Ov erv iew
 Review Checklists
SQA

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SQA

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