Papers by Oliver Laitenberger
The Unified Process (UP) is expected to become one of the leading methods for software engineerin... more The Unified Process (UP) is expected to become one of the leading methods for software engineering with the UML, but although it has a well-defined approach to testing, it has no consolidated strategy for inspection. This paper addresses this problem by describing how the latest inspection technologies can be integrated with the UP in a way that provides an optimal synergy with testing, and remains faithful to the UP’s philosophy of incremental, use-case driven development.
The basic motivation for software inspections is to detect and remove defects before they propaga... more The basic motivation for software inspections is to detect and remove defects before they propagate to subsequent development phases where their detection and removal becomes more expensive. To attain this potential, the examination of the artefact under inspection must be as thorough and detailed as possible. This implies the need for systematic reading techniques that tell inspection participants what to look for and, more importantly, how to scrutinise a software document. Recent research efforts investigated the benefits of scenario-based reading techniques for defect detection in functional requirements and functional code documents. A major finding has been that these techniques help inspection teams find more defects than existing state-of-the-practice approaches, such as, ad-hoc or checklist-based reading (CBR). In this paper we describe and experimentally compare one scenario-based reading technique, namely perspective-based reading (PBR), for defect detection in object-ori...
The external validity of an empirical investigation can be incrementally strengthened by replicat... more The external validity of an empirical investigation can be incrementally strengthened by replications performed by independent researchers. External replications can be promoted by the availability of experimental kits which package the experience of the original researchers. We present the lab manual of a controlled experiment for evaluating the effectiveness of a software reading technique known as Perspective-Based Reading (PBR). The lab manual includes the experimental design, the instruments for its execution, and the procedures for statistical tests. We have made the lab manual available over the World Wide Web. We hope to use the experiences we have gained through this process to evolve a lab package that meets the needs of software engineering researchers, to develop a consistent method for packaging experiments, and to facilitate the replication of experiments. 1. Introduction Research in computer science often involves the development of new systems, methods and techniques...
Technical reviews are a cost-effective method commonly used for the early detection of product de... more Technical reviews are a cost-effective method commonly used for the early detection of product defects. To exploit their full potential, it is necessary to constantly monitor and improve the implemented review procedure. This paper describes a systematic improvement effort to amplify and leverage the benefits of reviews at Lucent Technologies Optical Networking Group (ONG) at Nuremberg, Germany. The motivation for the effort stems from root cause analysis results. These results reveal that defects detected in later development phases could have been found earlier by reviews. The improvement effort involved a sequence of four steps. In the first step, review data was analyzed, the current review process was observed, review participants were interviewed, and the existing review documentation was scrutinized. In a second step improvement suggestions were derived based on the collected information and incorporated in the existing approach. The third step involved the training of the pa...
The development of high quality software satisfying cost, schedule, and resource requirements is ... more The development of high quality software satisfying cost, schedule, and resource requirements is an essential prerequisite for improved competitiveness of life insurance companies. One major difficulty to master this challenge is the inevitability of defects in software products. Since defects are known to be significantly more expensive if detected in later development phases or testing, companies in this marketplace must use cost-effective technologies to detect defects early on in the development process. A particular promising one is software inspection. This paper describes the ESPRIT/ESSI Process Improvement Experiment "High Quality of Software Products by Early Use of Innovative Reading Techniques (HYPER)". The core of this project has been the transfer of innovative software inspection technologies to the Allianz EURO conversion projects. The innovation in the area of software inspection is based on a systematic reading technique, that is, Perspective-based reading...
Encyclopedia of Software Engineering, 2010
Software project audits and management reviews are powerful methods to verify that software devel... more Software project audits and management reviews are powerful methods to verify that software development efforts are in line with their original budget, time, and quality objectives. In doing so, they usually involve the (manual) evaluation of project, process, or product characteristics to detect discrepancies from planned results. Hence, their focus is clearly on management rather than technical issues, which separates them from more quality-enhancing activities, such as software inspections or formal technical reviews. Since software project audits and management reviews are often conducted by third parties—either independent or in-house—they are in fact decision-making tools; that is, they provide the basis and rationale for more effective management decisions. This entry presents a practical road map to understand the underlying structure and mechanisms of software project audits and management reviews. The road map is primarily driven by practical rather than theoretical considerations and involves six distinct yet important dimensions: purpose, scope, process, participants, timing, and standards. In the context of the road map and the dimensions presented, this entry illustrates and explains software project audits and management reviews and provides some heuristics for their introduction and usage in organizations.
Software Reuse: Methods, Techniques, and Tools, 2002
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2003
A survey is an empirical research strategy for the collection of information from heterogeneous s... more A survey is an empirical research strategy for the collection of information from heterogeneous sources. In this way, survey results often exhibit a high degree of external validity. It is complementary to other empirical research strategies such as controlled experiments, which usually have their strengths in the high internal validity of the findings. While there is a growing number of
Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Software Engineering, 1998
It is difJicult for organizations introducing and using sofmare inspectiom to evaluate how effici... more It is difJicult for organizations introducing and using sofmare inspectiom to evaluate how efficient they are. However, it is of practical importance to determine whether they have been efjciently implemented or whether further corrective actions are necessay to bring them up to standard. We present in this paper a procedure for building inspection eficiency benchmarks based on simulation and typical inspection data. Based on most of the datu published in the literature, we build an industry-wide benchmark which intends to capture the current practice regarding inspection eflciency. This benchmark construction procedure can also be used to build enterprise speciJic benchmarks. Last, we assess how robust we can expect them to be by distorting their input distributions to reflect violations of the assumptions made.
Proceedings The Eighth International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, 1997
Abstract An important requirement to control the inspection of software artifacts is to be able t... more Abstract An important requirement to control the inspection of software artifacts is to be able to decide, based on objective information, whether inspection can stop or whether it should continue to achieve a suitable level of artifact quality. Several studies in software ...
Proceedings Fifth International Software Metrics Symposium. Metrics (Cat. No.98TB100262), 1998
Software tools can only be effective if users accept them. Investigating user acceptance requires... more Software tools can only be effective if users accept them. Investigating user acceptance requires a model explaining people's attitudes and behaviour as well as reliable and valid measurement instruments. This paper applies Davis' technology acceptance model (TAM) and its ...
Lecture Notes on Empirical Software Engineering, 2003
Haya Shida, Subscribe (Full Service), Register (Limited Service, Free), Login. Search: The ACM Di... more Haya Shida, Subscribe (Full Service), Register (Limited Service, Free), Login. Search: The ACM Digital Library The Guide. ...
Proceedings Eighth IEEE Symposium on Software Metrics, 2002
Software inspection is one of the key enablers for quality improvement and defect cost reduction.... more Software inspection is one of the key enablers for quality improvement and defect cost reduction. Although its benefits are shown in many studies, a major obstacle in implementing and applying inspection technologies in software projects remains the cost factor. Therefore, companies are interested in the most cost-effective inspection implementation. This interest, however, cannot be addressed appropriately without preliminary discussion about the inspection process design and the method of performing the selected process activities. As a consequence, the tailored process and activities often result in an inspection implementation that perfectly fits into a project or environment but is different to the traditional ones presented in the existing inspection literature. In this paper, we present and examine a non-traditional inspection implementation at DaimlerChrysler AG. The design of this inspection approach evolved over time as part of a continuous improvement effort and therefore integrates specific issues of the project environment as well as recent research findings. In addition to the description of the inspection approach, the paper presents qualitative as well as quantitative results to characterize the suggested inspection implementation and investigates some of the essential hypotheses in the inspection area. Both, the technical description as well as its quantitative underpinning serves as an example for other companies that pursue similar improvement or adaptation efforts.
Proceedings Seventh International Software Metrics Symposium, 2000
Software inspections have established an impressive track record for early defect detection and c... more Software inspections have established an impressive track record for early defect detection and correction. To increase their benefits, recent research efforts have focused on two different areas: systematic reading techniques and defect content estimation techniques. While reading techniques are to provide guidance for inspection participants on how to scrutinize a software artifact in a systematic manner, defect content estimation techniques
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Papers by Oliver Laitenberger