Experimentation with usage-based reading

Software inspections are regarded as an important technique to detect faults throughout the software development process. The individual preparation phase of software inspections has enlarged its focus from only comprehension to also include fault searching. Hence, reading techniques to support the reviewers on fault detection are needed. Usage-based reading (UBR) is a reading technique, which focuses on the important parts from a user's point of view in a software document by using prioritized use cases. UBR has been evaluated in two previously conducted experiments, which investigate the prioritization of UBR and compare UBR against checklist-based reading (CBR). This chapter presents two controlled experiments with UBR on requirements and design specifications. The experiments include individual preparation and inspection meeting, i.e. the first steps of the traditional inspection process. For the requirements inspection, UBR is evaluated against CBR, and for the design inspection, the amount of information needed in the use cases are studied. The studies were conducted in different environments with a total of about 100 students. The result from these experiments shows that UBR is not better than CBR for requirements inspections. Results from the experiment on design inspection indicate that use cases developed in advance are preferable compared to developing them as part of the preparation phase of the inspection