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An inspection is a formal evaluation technique in which artefacts are examined in detail by a person or group other than the author to detect errors, violations of development standards and other problems.

When adopting a new process, organisations often lack sufficient internal expertise to perform meaningful reviews of artefacts. Improvix can provide experienced practitioners who can objectively evaluate your work and help you gain confidence in producing high quality artefacts.

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An Artefact Inspection, which is often carried out as part of a Project Healthcheck or Audit, is usually undertaken without the author present by a subject matter expert.

An Artefact Review, which is usually carried out as a regular project activity, is undertaken with the author an other affected project team members. Where support is being provided to the project in terms of process expertise, a subject matter expert external to the project may lead or contribute to the review.

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An Artefact Inspection or Review comprises the following:-

• Identify the artefact, the project and phase in which it was produced, the artefact owner
• Describe the artefact
• Describe the reason for the inspection, e.g. Healthcheck item, Audit item, ad hoc request etc., explaining why this particular artefact is being subjected to inspection
• Record the provenance of the artefact. Is there a Work Order covering production of this artefact? Are there any Change Requests that affect it?
• Describe the quality of the artefact. Identify any errors. Record compliance with standards, e.g. UML, RUP (including tailoring such as specified in a Development Case)
• Describe how the artefact was used. Did it form the input to another activity? Was it used at all?

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Results from the Project Healthcheck are provided in a report that records the Areas Assessed listed above. In addition a Summary is given reflecting the major quality criterion of the artefact:-

• Compliance - RUP, UML, Development Case etc. standards, best practices used/evident
• Completeness - is the artefact at a level of completeness demanded by the process and Development Case?
• Suitability - is the type of artefact appropriate to its purpose?

Each of the above quality aspects are rated as follows:

• Sufficient - Criterion is met to an adequate degree
• Below Standard - Criterion is only partially met
• Not measurable - Criterion is not met in any way

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