Annotation of software artifacts is common in software development, and vital for software inspection. People viewing annotated artifacts encounter delocalization: they must understand various parts of an artifact (and their annotations) to understand the part they are viewing. We taxonomize delocalization within software systems into lateral delocalization (different items of the artifact within the same development phase), longitudinal delocalization (related items in different phases), and historical delocalization (successive versions of the same item). We report on a pilot study of code inspection with AnnoSpec, an inspection tool supporting visibility of laterally-delocalized annotations. Our results suggest that addressing delocalization may help people perform inspections more effectively.

Computer-supported annotation of software systems and their documentation, including design documentation and source code, is a common and important software engineering activity. Annotated documentation is used in both formal software inspection and informal software maintenance. Viewers of annotated systems may understand the software more easily if annotations are visible not just from the annotated item itself but from other, related items. We propose a general framework for interconnecting annotatable items in software systems to achieve this visibility. We describe filtering and broadening rules that viewers can use to select the annotations they desire to see. We illustrate this framework in the context of object-oriented software system development.

Traditional software inspection requires participants to meet together at the same time in the same place.Distributed, asynchronous inspection allows participants to conduct meetings independently of time and space, making inspection more convenient.We report on an industrial study that we have performed using a tool designed for distributed, asynchronous software inspection.Our e>..-perience suggests that distributed, asynchronous software inspection is feasible, and is a costeffective means of collaboration for geographically distributed work groups.