Structured Walkthrough

A structured walkthrough is a static testing technique that will be performed and also organised in a manner between a group of peers to review and also discuss the technical aspects of software development process. The prime goal of a structured walkthrough is to find defects to upgrade the quality of the product.

The benefits of structured walkthrough is:

It saves time and also money as defects will be found and rectified very early in the lifecycle.
This provides value added comments from the reviewers with a different technical backgrounds and also experience.
It also notifies the project management team and also progress of the development process.
It creates awareness about the different development or may be maintenance methodologies which can provide a professional growth to participants.

The technique of quality assurance during software development will be an important one. It is the most significant phase of software development life cycle which requires great deal of planning and testing. Here one can validate the quality of the product but also based that the end product will have an exceptional effectiveness performance and functionality.

Walkthrough will be considered as one of the most important method in quality assurance.Structured walkthrough will interchange of ideas among the peers, who will review the product presented by the author. Its purpose will be to anticipate as many problems in a design as possible and also improve the quality of the product.

What exactly is structured walkthrough?

Structured Walkthrough can be good quality assurance action. It is an systematically organised procedure for a group of peers to review and also discuss the technical aspects of any software development products. The prime goal of a structured walkthrough is to find an error and also to improve the quality of the product. It will be formal technique for all checking the solution of the algorithm. The programmer explains the logic of the algorithm, while the members of the programming team step through the program logic.

The basic intention of the walkthrough is error detection but not error correction. When the walkthrough will be completed the author of the work product will be responsible for taking the necessary actions to correct the errors. The author will conduct the private conversation with all the reviewers or conduct follow-up meetings to discuss potential solutions. Structured walkthrough will be done in all stages of the system lifecycle.

The participants of structured walkthrough are:

Structured walkthrough involves several important activities which will be completed by the different experts of a quality assurance team. It is form of a software peer review where the designer or programmer will lead members of the development team and also others will be interested parties through the software product and the participants will ask the questions and will make the comments about the occurring errors, violation of the development standards. The various participants in structured walkthrough are:

1.Author

Author of this work product will be held responsible for requesting the walkthrough for meaningful portion of the product is developed and is free of casual errors or defects.

2.Presenter

It builds the basic agenda for all the walkthrough and present the work product which is being reviewed. The presenter should be knowing with the work product and should be a member of the project team.

3.Moderator

The main responsibility of any moderator is to facilitate the walkthrough session and make sure that the walkthrough agenda will be followed. Moderators will encourage the participants of all the reviewers. The moderator can also be the scribe.

4.Reviewers

By evaluating the work product to determine if it is technically accurate. The reviewers also assess whether the project guidelines or standards which are being followed the project requirements which are met and the product properly prepared.

5.Scribe

The scribe has notes during the walkthrough. Its their responsibility to record the errors that are identified and any technical comments, suggestions and also unresolved questions.

Why structured walkthrough is important?

The significance of structured walkthrough in software development process and also quality assurance will be extremely high. It is one of the method of quality assurance which focuses on the improvement of the system by early detection of faults and improves confidence in the system. The importance of structured walkthrough are:

Walkthrough are more important method in quality assurance.
It don’t require actual design or may be system alteration during the whole process.
walkthroughs can take place throughout system development.

Advantages of structured walkthrough:

The advantages of structured walkthrough are:

It will save time and also money by finding and correcting the errors in the life cycle.
It also provides value added input from the reviewers with a different technical backgrounds.
It validates and improves the related life cycle work products.
It keeps the project team informed of the development progress.
It also provides professional growth to the participants by giving them an opportunity to look different development methodologies and also approaches.