Software Technical Reviews in Software Testing

Software Technical Review :

A software technical review is examined by a team of qualified software engineers for the suitability of the software product. This process can also be defined as a critical evaluation of an object in the software. Through the software technical review process, we can identify the errors or defects in the software product in the early phase itself.

Types of STRs :

The intent of this section is for the students to realize that the types of reviews that must be performed on a project are dependent upon the specific intermediate deliverables that are produced. Various application areas should also be described in the context of their review processes. The types of developmental modes are as follows:

1. Development life cycle models –
   a. Waterfall model
   b. Rapid prototyping
   c. Iterative enhancement
   d. Maintenance activity modeling
2. Current Standards –
   a. Military standards
   b. IEEE standards
   c. NBS standards

Furthermore, the reviews are classified into two types: Formal and Informal reviews.
Informal reviews are meant to describe the type of review that typically occurs spontaneously among peers and in which the reviewers have any work and also not create a review report. Formal reviews are characterized by carefully planned meetings in which reviewers are held accountable for their participation in the review and in which a review report containing action items is generated and acted upon.

Importance of STRs :

Some of the reasons behind the importance of STRs are as follows:

1. It also impacts employee morale. For some employees, such as maintenance personnel, the reviews may provide an opportunity to gain visibility of their work and, thus, will be viewed positively.
2. It helps in software maintainability as it improves the developer’s general understanding of the whole system, which further facilitates error diagnosis during maintenance.
3. It helps in the tracking of a project for both project management and customers. With this, we can track management, customers, and also developers’ projects.
4. They provide feedback about the software and its development process. Examples of how review processes can impact the existing software development such as by identifying weaknesses in the software that will require additional validation effort in the future must also be provided.

Review Methodologies :

There are many variations to performing technical reviews. Most of these approaches involve a group meeting to assess a work product; however, variations of reviews exist that do not require a review group meeting. The three major approaches for performing the software technical review are given as follows:

1. Walk-through –
   Walk-throughs are a formal and very systematic type of verification method as compared to peer review. In a walkthrough, the author of the software document presents the document to other persons which can range from 2 to 7.
2. Inspections –
   Inspections are the most structured and formal type of verification method and are commonly known as inspections. It requires detailed preparation for the reviewing team members and it includes a very high systematic review of the software product.
3. Audits –
   It can also be described as an external type of review process as it serves to ensure that the software is correctly verified and working as per the requirement.