Formal Review Process

Since Formal reviews seem to be more elaborate and  complex than informal reviews I have decided to go more in depth.  While informal reviews are more common due to less structure and planning Formal reviews happen less often, usually every few weeks as opposed to informal review that can happen every few days, and have a lot more structure and planning involved.
 Typical formal reviews have 6 steps:
1. Planning
This is the beginning of the review process and starts when the author of the software requests a review from the moderator who's job is to lead the inspection.  The moderator then has to schedule the start and end dates of the review, and work with the author to come up with test documents including entry criteria.  The document can't be too long as most people can't retain a large number of pages of info.  during this phase the people who will be involved in the review will be decided on, and from these chosen reviewers the moderator hands out duties and tasks to them.


2. Kick-off
This step is stated by ISTQB to be optional but is highly recommended as it gives the review team members a degree of understanding about the document.  During this phase reviewers are given a short intro on the objective of the review and document.  The relationship between the review document and other documents used as sources are explained as well.


3. Preparation
This part of the review is where the individual reviewers gather up all of their data and materials they have compiled in testing to work on the document.  In this phase the reviewers identify defects, questions and comments and all the issues are recorded.  Using checklists in this phase is a way to make the testing more efficient.  The efficiency can also be checked by number of pages checked in an hour which varies greatly depending on the number of pages, and the complexity of the software.


4. Review Meeting
This is the actual review, where the review team gets together to talk about the defects that they have found as well as ask questions and collaborate with one another.  Bugs talked about in the review is recorded by scribe.  The severity of every defect is also recorded by the scribe and there are 3 levels of severity Critical, Major, and Minor


5. Rework
This is the phase where the reviewers try to retest and improve the documents step by step. It's up to the author to decided if the defects need to be fixed.  Then the author updates the software and the document.


6. Follow up
This is done by the moderator and is when they determine if the changes done by the author to the software and document are adequate, and the bugs have been removed from the affected areas.




The tasks of a formal review are divided up to include the author 9program writer), a moderator (inspection leader), a scribe (recorder), the reviewers (testers), and a manager (the boss).