Assessing the Effects of Academic and Work Experience Backgrounds on Software Defect Detection Effectiveness

Abstract

Inspection of various software artefacts increases the quality of the end product – the software. The question yet unanswered is “Does effectiveness of software inspection depend largely on the academic and work experience backgrounds of individual inspectors involved?” To address this issue, a medium-scale controlled code inspection experiment with 28 final year students from selected Departments in the Faculty of Science and 10 professionals was conducted at University of Ibadan. The experiment was designed to find out the relationship (if exist) between inspectors’ academic and work experience backgrounds and their defect detection effectiveness during an industrial code inspection. The results of the study showed that those with computer related background found significantly more defects than those with non computer related background. It is also found out that prior industrial code writing and inspection experiences significantly impact the effectiveness of an inspector. Finally, professionals with prior code inspection experience found significantly more defects than their student counterparts.