Software Development and Professional Practice

C H A P T E R  15

Walkthroughs, Code Reviews, and Inspections

Our objective with Inspections is to reduce the Cost of Quality by finding and removing defects earlier and at a lower cost. While some testing will always be necessary, we can reduce the costs of test by reducing the volume of defects propagated to test.

—Ron Radice (2002)

When you catch bugs early, you also get fewer compound bugs. Compound bugs are two separate bugs that interact: you trip going downstairs, and when you reach for the handrail it comes off in your hand.

—Paul Graham (2001)

Here's a shocker: your main quality objective in software development is to get a working program to your user that meets all their requirements and has no defects. That's right: your code ...