Formal Vs Informal Review

Section 3.2 of the ISTQB book is about the test review process.  There are 2 types of review, informal review, and formal review.  While each one has it's differences they both share the goal of finding defects, and to help fellow testers gain a better understanding of the software, and test requirements, and cases.


Informal reviews are the more simple and commonly used of the 2 types. They can be done at anytime during the early stages of testing, it can only take 2 people to do an informal review, and they can be conducted with little planning, they don't required to be led by a trained moderator.  There are many informal testing types but one thing they all share in common is that they are undocumented meaning that no one needs to record a list of defects, and there is no compilation of test cases and defects given out to the review members.


Formal reviews on the other hand are a lot more complex.  They are usually done in the later stages of testing and because of that they require more people.  They have six main steps:
1. planning
2. kick-off
3. preparation
4. review meeting
5. rework
6. follow up
The formal meetings also have a number of roles that are allocated in the planning phase.  The roles are the Moderators, Scribes, Authors, Reviewers, and Managers.  Like informal reviews there are different types of formal testing such as technical reviews, and walkthroughs, and not every role is present in every review type, for instance, walkthroughs have the authors explaining the software and leading the review, while technical reviews have trained moderators leading the review instead and the authors are usually absent.  Scribes and reviewers however are present in most if not all formal review types.