The Use of Tools and Reading Techniques in Enhancing the Benefits of Software Inspections

Karina Gamble and Bill Hackenberg

Wednesday, October 05 2005

Networking Dinner @ 5:45; Pre-Meeting Bootcamp @ 6:15 and Chapter Business @ 6:45; Program @ 7:00 PM

At Countrywide, 2900 Madera, Simi Valley, CA 93065

Since the inception of code inspections in the early 1970's software code inspections have been known to be one of the most cost-effective methods to early defect detection or removal. Several studies have shown that code inspections can find significantly more errors than testing alone can. Yet, most software development organizations have not adopted company-wide formal code inspection processes. This presentation will explain most common reasons for the lack of established company-wide inspection process, and describe how the use of some software reading techniques and tools such as static analysis tools, can help organizations get higher returns of investment from their inspection processes.

Karina has over 16 years of experience in the software industry. She has worked as a quality management consultant for various clients in the financial, mortgage, insurance, health care and pharmaceutical industries. She is the founder and the President of QA Insight, a company that helps clients deploy cost effective and successful software projects, integrating open source tools with best of breed practices. Their mission is to help clients plan and deploy successful software quality improvement initiatives by identifying and implementing critical changes that are required to take place in the areas of processes, tools, and people's skill sets. Prior to founding QA Insight, she has held several leadership positions at both large established companies such as at NCR and small start-up internet companies. She has led several initiatives such as deploying enterprise-wide software change and test management processes and tools; championed in-house development of test automation tools; strategic planning and deployment of a large division level Capability Maturity Model (CMM) based software process improvement initiative at NCR. Karina is well known in the software quality community and is actively involved as board member of several professional associations. Karina has taught several quality and software testing courses and has given talks on quality, testing and software process improvements. Karina has an undergraduate B.S. degree in Psychobiology from UCLA and a graduate M.S. degree in Computer Science from CSUN.