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Software inspection is now widely accepted as an effective technique for defect detection. This acceptance is largely based on studies using procedural program code. This paper presents empirical evidence that raises significant questions about the application of inspection to object-oriented code. A detailed analysis of the 'hard to find' defects during an inspection experiment shows that many of them can be characterised as 'delocalised' - the information needed to recognise the defect is distributed throughout the software. The paper shows that key features of object-oriented technology are likely to exaggerate delocalisation. As a result, it is argued that new methods of inspection for object-oriented code are required. These must address: partitioning code for inspection ('what to read'), reading strategies ('how to read'), and support for understanding what isn't read - 'localising the delocalisation'

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This paper describes the development and experimental evaluation of a rigorous approach for effective object-oriented (OO) code inspection. Since their development, inspections have been shown to be powerful defect detection strategies but little research has been done to investigate their application to OO systems, which have very different structural and execution models compared to procedural systems. Previous investigations have demonstrated that the delocalised nature of OO software - the resolution of frequent non-local references, and the incongruous relationship between its static and dynamic representations, are primary inhibitors to its effective inspection. The experiment investigates a set of three complementary code reading techniques devised specifically to address these problems: one based on a checklist adapted to address the identified problems of OO inspections, one focused on the systematic construction of abstract specifications, and the last centered on the dynamic slice that a use-case takes through a system. The analysis shows that there is a significant difference in the number of defects found between the three reading techniques. The checklist-based technique emerges as the most effective approach but the other techniques also have noticeable strengths and so for the best results in a practical situation a combination of techniques is recommended

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