When two is good company, but more is not a crowd
Andy J. Nolan, Andrew C Pickard, Jennifer Lin Russell, William D. Schindel · INCOSE International Symposium · 2015
Abstract This paper summarizes an approach to improve the effectiveness of the review (inspection) process. Effectiveness here is defined as the ability to reduce the number of defects escaping a review activity. By carefully pairing up developers and reviews, Rolls‐Royce was able to halve the rate of occurrence of defects in software, with no change to the process or tools, and with no changes to the team or the effort required to perform the reviews. The method hinges on an understanding of the capability of the developers and reviewers and making sure that only select pairings of team members will be allowed. The paper illustrates an example of the practice when applied to software code review but the principle can be applied to any development process. The code review process is an example of the principle but the philosophy can be applied to many more areas of the system development process. The paper ends by illustrating other ways to benefit from this approach.