How perspective-based reading can improve requirements inspections

Because defects constitute an unavoidable aspect of software development, discovering and removing them early is crucial. Overlooked defects (like faults in the software system requirements, design, or code) propagate to subsequent development phases where detecting and correcting them becomes more difficult. At best, developers will eventually catch the defects, but at the expense of schedule delays and additional product-development costs. At worst, the defects will remain, and customers will receive a faulty product. The authors explain their perspective based reading (PBR) technique that provides a set of procedures to help developers solve software requirements inspection problems. PBR reviewers stand in for specific stakeholders in the document to verify the quality of requirements specifications. The authors show how PBR leads to improved defect detection rates for both individual reviewers and review teams working with unfamiliar application domains.