Design and Code Inspections to Reduce Errors in Program Development¶
Fagan, M. E. (1976). Design and Code Inspections to Reduce Errors in Program Development. IBM Systems Journal, 15(3), 182-211.
Cited by¶
5 citations across 5 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- External Analytic Challenge
- And the exchange must be scheduled on the reversible side of a commitment threshold.
This sourceSpecifies an inspection with defined roles held by people other than the author, checklist-driven examination rather than open comment, and mandatory rework plus moderator follow-up before the work product passes its phase exit.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
Supplies the gate principle — errors must be fixed and fixes verified before an operation's exit criteria are met — but not that an exchange must be scheduled on the reversible side of a commitment threshold.
“Describe the program development process in terms of operations, and define exit criteria which must be satisfied for completion of each operation.”
- And the exchange must be scheduled on the reversible side of a commitment threshold.
- Parallel Independent Inspection
- Each inspector \(i\) detects \(d\) with probability \(p_i\), and the inspectors work in parallel (overlapping), so the probability the defect survives all of them is the product of individual miss-rates: \(P(\text{miss}) = \prod_i (1 - p_i)\), and detection coverage is its complement, \(1 - \prod_i (1 - p_i)\) — the Union of detection events, not the intersection.
This sourceFoundational formal inspection method establishing union-of-detection coverage across independent inspectors.
- Each inspector \(i\) detects \(d\) with probability \(p_i\), and the inspectors work in parallel (overlapping), so the probability the defect survives all of them is the product of individual miss-rates: \(P(\text{miss}) = \prod_i (1 - p_i)\), and detection coverage is its complement, \(1 - \prod_i (1 - p_i)\) — the Union of detection events, not the intersection.
Domain-specific¶
- Code Review
- Software inspection
- A software inspection is a structured peer-review process in which trained reviewers examine a software work product for defects before relying on its execution.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
Fagan's abstract frames inspection as a staged team operation in program development that finds, fixes and re-verifies errors in design and code, but states no formal definition.
“Separate the objectives of the inspection process operations to keep the inspection team focused on one objective at a time: Operation Overview Preparation Inspection Rework Follow-up Objective Communications/education Education Find errors Fix errors Ensure all fixes are applied correctly.”
- A software inspection is a structured peer-review process in which trained reviewers examine a software work product for defects before relying on its execution.
Mechanisms¶
- Parallel Code Review Round
- And an oversized diff defeats the whole point, pushing every reviewer into the same fatigued skim that misses the same defect — the formal-inspection tradition found that disciplined, bounded independent review catches defects earlier and cheaper than downstream testing, but only when the review is real.
This sourceFagan's formal-inspection method uses disciplined, rate-bounded review to find defects early, reduce rework, and improve software quality and productivity.
- And an oversized diff defeats the whole point, pushing every reviewer into the same fatigued skim that misses the same defect — the formal-inspection tradition found that disciplined, bounded independent review catches defects earlier and cheaper than downstream testing, but only when the review is real.
Verification¶
Does it exist? Confirmed. This work's DOI resolves to a registered record, which fixes its identity. That is all it fixes.
Does it back the claim? Read against the text for 2 of 5 citations: 2 supported in part. Each verdict is shown under its citation below, with what in the work backs the sentence.
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