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the spot, or if discussion lasts more than about five minutes, the moderator adds it to
the inspection log as an open issue and assigns it to the team member who brought it up
(and anyone else who is involved), so he can work with the author to resolve it. Once
all issues for the page are discussed, the moderator moves to the next page in the work
product.
Rework
After the inspection meeting is over, the author makes the changes in the inspection log
and works with the inspection team members to resolve all open issues. When the
changes are complete, the author turns the updated work product over to the moderator.
Follow-up
The moderator distributes the updated work product to the inspection team. Each team
member verifies that he can now approve the work product. If there are any issues that
were not fully resolved or additional defects that were not caught, he notifies the mod-
erator, who calls another inspection meeting and starts the inspection process over
again. Once the team gets through an inspection without any open issues and can agree
on any changes that must be made, the work product can be updated and distributed
for approval.
Approval
If any inspector feels that there are still further issues raised by the corrections to the
work product, another inspection meeting can be held; however, the project manager
and author can also work individually with everyone involved to make sure that the
changes are adequate. Once everyone on the team feels that the changes they identified
are adequate, they can approve the updated work product without holding another
inspection meeting.
The moderator adds a signature page to the work product and distributes a printed ver-
sion for signature approval. The signed work product is archived.

Manage the Author’s Expectations
Many people who have implemented inspections have found that it is very difficult for
authors to sit through an inspection meeting without defending their work. Instead of
providing clarification that is used to update the work product, they take over the discus-

sion and, by being defensive and loud, get the inspectors to agree not to report defects.
This is counterproductive: it leads to situations when the inspection team understands
what the author meant, but the work product, which remains unchanged, does not reflect
this. It is the moderator’s job to keep the discussions on track and prepare the authors for
the inspection.

A major challenge of the moderator role is keeping the author from altering the understand-
ing of the document through discussion. The purpose of the discussions is not to teach the
inspectors about the project; it is to change the document so that the author and all of the
inspectors will approve it. There is a simple rule in document inspection: if there is a misun-
derstanding about words in the document, they need to be clarified in the document, and
not just in the minds of the people who happened to attend the inspection meeting.

80 CHAPTER FIVE