Software inspection benchmarking-a qualitative and quantitative comparative opportunity

Software inspections are commonly used throughout the software industry, but there are still open questions about the relationship between inspection processes and inspection effectiveness. For example, which techniques work best in various environments? Are requirements specifications inspections and code inspections different in terms of effectiveness? What is the effectiveness in inspections for different group sizes? Benchmarking provides an opportunity to address such issues. This paper discusses how benchmarking may be applied for software inspections. The discussion is illustrated with an empirical study. It is shown how the data can be used to plan and manage software inspections. It is concluded that software inspections are well suited for benchmarking and that software practitioners as well as researchers can learn valuable lessons.