Stupid Question 104: What is a 'Fagan Inspection'?

[To celebrate my first year of programming I will ask a ‘stupid’ questions daily on my blog for a year, to make sure I learn at least 365 new things during my second year as a developer]

Fagan inspection- formal code review

So I came across a really funny term while reading about code review, something called a Fagan Inspection. I don’t know why it sounds funny to me, but it just does :D

So, what is it?

It’s a formal code review (done in group), and is named after the guy who came up with it, mister Michael Fagan (IBM) during the early 70’s.

It’s believed (and proven in a few studies) to be very effective at detecting so-called defects (I’ll get back to this soon). At the same time I would like to point out that informal code review is also very effective, so it’s not given that a Fagan inspection is superior. It probably (because I am not an expert) depends on quite a few factors.

A defect is defined as:

A piece that is not correct, complete or actually missing. If something doesn’t meet the requirements, then there’s a defect.

The inspection itself is defined in six stages/steps:

1. Planning

2. Overview

3. Preparation

4. Meeting

5. Rework (at this point one can return back to the planning stage again for a new cycle)

6. Follow-up

Everybody participating in the process are given different roles such as:

• Reader

• Author

• Reviewers

• Moderators

• Inspector

I reckon this sounds rather interesting, and I would like to try this. I’ll see if I can get together a group of devs and try this out. If you have any experience with this, and maybe even some handy tips please feel free to comment!

Comments

Hi,

This formal process is *very* expensive, so unless your creating safety(life)-critical or mission critical software, the chances that you'll find room in your budget for it is probably limited.

That said, peer reviewing of code is a good thing, and you can find techniques and inspirations in processes like this.

 --larsw 

yeah, it does sound rather expensive! 

Not as expensive as an accident 

Last modified on 2012-12-14