Guidelines for Test Case/ Test Plan/ Requirements/ Project Plan Review Planning and Preparation

Review Planning

1. Allocate resources and time schedule for reviews.
   For reviews to be effective, they should be scheduled as tasks during the software engineering process. You should plan for up to 20 % of the effort spent on creating the documents to be reviewed.
   In addition, time should be scheduled for the possible modifications that will occur as the result of a review. You should plan for up to 10 % of the effort spent on creating the documents to be reviewed (in case of one rework).

2. Conduct meaningful training for all reviewers.
   The training should stress both process-related issues and the human psychological side of reviews.

3. Choose a moderator for the review session.
   • The moderator must have the analytic expertise to be able to follow the review discussions.
   • The moderator should not directly be involved in the project.

4. Determine the aspects for which the result should be surveyed by the review team.
   The aspects conform to
   • experiences from past products,
   • the previous progression of the software project and
   • the presumed strength and weakness of the author.
   You should choose those aspects which conceal the highest risks!

5. The reviewers should be selected depending on the chosen aspects.
   • Each aspect should be reviewed by at least two qualified reviewers.
   • Each reviewer may examine more than one aspect.
   • Human aspects should also be considered when assembling the review team.
   If the required reviewers are not available in your project you should ask for experts in other projects.

6. Develop a checklist for each product that is likely to be reviewed.
   A checklist helps the moderator to structure the review meeting and helps each reviewer to focus on important issues. A set of representative review checklists is presented in the following documents.

Review Initialization

1. After the product to be reviewed is available, the producer has to inform the project manager.

2. The manager must decide (maybe in cooperation with the moderator) whether the result is worth to be reviewed.

3. After this, the moderator should initialize the review process. He must provide the reviewers with all necessary information:
   • the product to be reviewed
   • reference documents, e.g. documents the result is based on and guidelines that had to be respected
   • checklists to be answered when reviewing the product
   The product should be supplied together with the invitation, the additional documents should be referenced uniquely.

4. Plan for a presentation of the product and its application domain and/or an introduction into the importance and purpose of technical reviews
   • in case the reviewers are not very familiar with the peripherie of the product or
   • they have only little experience in technical reviews.
   The presentation should take between half an hour and one hour.

Review Preparation

1. The moderator must make sure that all reviewers are in possession of all required information.

2. The moderator must ask the reviewers if the time given for preparation is sufficient.

3. If there is no choice for thorough preparation, the moderator has to cancel the review process.

4. All reviewers have to examine the product according to the allocated aspects.

5. Each finding may either be
   • marked in the document (in case of slightly errors) or
   • formulated to be presented in the review session (in case of weightily errors).

6. The author may not modify the product during the review preparation.