Page 51 - SOFTWARE TESTING & QUALITY ASSURANCE

Software Testing and Quality Assurance

4. Write a Report: The formal review group produces a written report summarizing all the results
of the review and the report is made available to the rest of the development team. Thereby, the
problems encountered are shared with the team.
There are many steps involved in formal review. They are peer reviews, walkthroughs, and inspections.
Peer Reviews
Peer reviews are the informal reviews where team members conduct reviews amongst themselves. They
are also known as buddy reviews.
Peer reviews are conducted with a programmer who has been involved in designing the architecture or
code along with other programmers or testers, who act as reviewers. To ensure an effective review, the
participants involved in the review are required to adhere to the four key elements of formal review
(identify problems, follow rules, prepare and write a report).
Walkthroughs

Walkthroughs are the second step of the formal reviews. In this method, the programmer who
developed the code presents the code to a group consisting of five or six member team of programmers
and testers. A walkthrough is conducted to provide an overview about the structure of the code in the
presence of a senior programmer and other reviewers.
The presenter reads through the code line by line, or function by function and explains what each
function and line of code means. Relevant comments and queries are addressed during the
walkthrough session. Since the number of participants in a walkthrough is more than those in the peer
review session, it becomes even more important to follow rules and have periodic follow-up meetings.
After the completion of the review, the presenter makes a report of the meeting and also the way the
bugs were addressed.
Inspections
Inspections follow a structured format. It is very different from walkthrough and peer reviews. The
person who presents a code is not the real programmer. The participants are called inspectors. The
inspectors are provided the task of reviewing the code from the user’s and tester’s perspective. This
helps in bringing out the views about the product from various perspectives, thus helping in identifying
the different bugs in the product.
The inspectors are provided with the task of reviewing the code backwards i.e. from end to beginning.
This is done to ensure that the product has been evenly reviewed. Inspectors are also assigned the task
of moderators and recorders to ensure that the testing is adhering to the rules and effectively running
the reviews.
After the completion of the inspection, another meeting is conducted by the inspectors alone to discuss
the defects that were found and they work with the moderators who are competent programmers to
identify the areas of rework. The programmer then rectifies the defects and the moderators verify the
same to ensure that it is done properly. Re-inspections are conducted based on the criticality of a
software bug that is found.
4.1.3 Coding Standards and Guidelines

In the formal review method, inspectors look only for the problems and omissions in the code. Bugs are
however found by carefully analyzing the code which is done by the senior programmers and testers.
Sometimes, there are also possibilities where a code may operate correctly but may not be written to
meet the specification standards. This is similar to writing English which is grammatically correct, but
may not convey the correct meaning.
To handle such situations, some standards are fixed based on the have-to-follow rules of Do’s and
Don’ts. Along with them, some guidelines are also prepared. Guidelines are the best practices and
recommendations which are preferred to be followed. Standards are rules which must be adhered to,
whereas guidelines are instructions which enable a person to follow a set of standards.

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