Checklist Inspections and Modifications: Applying Bloom's Taxonomy to Categorize Developer Comprehension

Software maintenance can consume up to 70 % of the ef-fort spent on a software project, with more than half of this devoted to understanding the system. Performing a soft-ware inspection is expected to contribute to comprehension of the software. The question is: at what cognition lev-els do novice developers operate during a Checklist-Based code inspection followed by a code modification? This pa-per reports on a pilot study of Bloom’s taxonomy levels observed during a Checklist-Based inspection and while adding new functionality unrelated to the defects detected. Bloom’s taxonomy was used to categorise think-aloud data recorded while performing these activities. Results show the Checklist-Based Reading technique facilitates inspec-tors to function at the highest cognitive level within the tax-onomy and indicates that using inspections with novice de-velopers to improve cognition and understanding may assist integrating developers into existing project teams. 1