| Research in software inspection has led to the development of techniques focused on providing structure and guidance to the individual inspector, with the goal of improving effectiveness. This thesis defines and investigates a new inspection technique, task directed inspection, specifically developed for inspecting complex computational code. Students from the Royal Military College of Canada and Queen's University in Kingston, as participants in an experiment, applied two task directed techniques and an industry-standard non-structured inspection technique to civil engineering code in use in military applications. Results from the experiment were analyzed using a new orthogonal defect classification for computational code developed for this thesis. Based on this small sample group, the task-directed techniques help software inspectors more thoroughly examine and understand software code. This research also clearly points out the differences between experienced and inexperienced inspectors, and opens up several possibilities for further research. |
