Abstract
In order to improve the efficiency of inspections, quantitative data on defect content have to be the basis for decisions in the inspection process. An experience-based capture-recapture method is proposed, which overcomes some problems with the basic pre-requisites of the original method. A C-code inspection experiment is conducted to evaluate the enhanced method and its applicability to software code inspections. It is concluded that the experience-based estimation procedure gives significantly better estimates than the maximum-likelihood method and the estimates are not very sensitive to changes in the inspection data.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Briand, L. C., El Emam, K., Freimut, B., and Laitenberger, O. 1997. Quantitative evaluation of capture-recapture models to control software inspections. Proceedings 8th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, 234–244.
Briand, L. C., El Emam, K., and Freimut, B. 1998. Comparison and integration of capture-recapture models and the detection profile method. In Proceedings 9th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, Paderborn, Germany.
Chillarege, R., Bhandari, I., Chaar, J., Halliday, M., Moebus, D., Ray, B., and Wong, Man-Yuen. 1992. Orthogonal defect classification—A concept for in-process measurements. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 18(11): 943–956.
Ebrahimi, N. B.1997. On the statistical analysis of the number of errors remaining in a software design document after inspection. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 23(8): 529–532.
Eick, S., Loader, C., Long, D., Votta, L., and Vander Wiel, S. 1992. Estimating software fault content before coding. Proceedings 14th International Conference on Software Engineering, Melbourne, Australia, 59–65.
Fagan, M. 1986. Advances in software inspections. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 12(7): 744–751.
Gilb, T., and Graham, D. 1993. Software Inspection. Addison-Wesley.
Humphrey, W. 1995. A Discipline for Software Engineering. Addison-Wesley.
Johnson, P. M., and Tjahjono, D. 1998. Does every inspection really need a meeting? Journal of Empirical Software Engineering 3(1): 9–35.
Montgomery, D.C., 1997. Design and Analysis of Experiments. 4th edition, John Wiley & Sons.
Otis, D., Burnham G., White, G., and Anderson, D. 1978. Statistical inference from capture data on closed animal populations. Wildlife Monografics 62: 1–135.
Porter, A., Siy, H., Toman, C. A., and Votta, L.1995. An experiment to assess the cost-benefits of code inspections in large scale software development. '95 Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering, Washington, DC, USA, 92–103.
Siegel, S., and Castellan, J. Jr. 1988. Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences. McGraw-Hill.
Vander Wiel, S., and Votta, L. 1993. Assessing software designs using capture-recapture methods. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 19(11): 1045–1054.
Votta, L. 1993. Does every inspection need a meeting? '93 Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering, New Orleans, LA, USA, 107–114.
White, G., Anderson, D., Burnham, K., and Otis, D. 1982. Capture-recapture and removal methods for sampling closed populations. Technical Report, Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Wohlin, C., Runeson, P., and Brantestam, J. 1995. An experimental evaluation of capture-recapture in software inspections. Journal of Software Testing, Verification and Reliability 5(4): 213–232.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Runeson, P., Wohlin, C. An Experimental Evaluation of an Experience-Based Capture-Recapture Method in Software Code Inspections. Empirical Software Engineering 3, 381–406 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009728205264
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009728205264