Difference between Walkthrough & Inspection
Both Walkthroughs and Inspections are undertaken before actual development and hence they are conducted on documents such as development plan, SOW, RDD and SRS, Design document and broad WBS to examine their authenticity, completeness, correctness and accuracy.Below are some of the major differences between Walkthrough and Inspection:
| Walkthrough | Inspection |
|---|---|
| Walkthrough is less formal and has only few steps. | Inspections and reviews are more formal and logically sequential with many steps. |
| As discussed above walkthrough is less formal and quick. | Inspection is more formal, takes more time and is far more systematic due to the use of checklists. |
| A major difference between structured walkthroughs and inspection is that inspections collect information to improve the development and review processes themselves. In this sense, an inspection is more of a quality assurance technique than walkthrough. | |
| In walkthrough, for example, you can call your colleague and do an informal walkthrough to just check if the documentation and coding is correct. | As far as inspection is concerned, for instance in your organisation, you can have an official body which approves design documents for any project. Every project in your organisation needs to go through an inspection which reviews your design documents. If there are issues in the design documents, then your project will get a NC (non-conformance) list. You cannot proceed without clearing the NC’s given by the inspection team. |
Source:
SOFTWARE ENGG By JAWADEKAR.
Software Testing and Continuous Quality Improvement, Third Edition By William E. Lewis.
Software Testing By S. Koirala, S. Sheikh.