requirements-review-advisor

Choose based on three factors: system risk level, review scope, and available resources. Safety-critical or business-critical systems warrant formal Fagan inspections, standard projects suit structured walkthroughs, and low-risk individual requirements only need a peer desk check.

The Fagan inspection has six stages: planning, overview, preparation, meeting, rework, and follow-up. Most defects are found during independent preparation, and each stage has defined entry and exit criteria with assigned roles like moderator, author, and inspectors.

A requirements review checklist should check for ambiguity, incompleteness, inconsistency, infeasibility, unverifiability, duplication, gold-plating, and design details embedded in requirements. Each requirement should also be complete, correct, feasible, necessary, prioritized, unambiguous, verifiable, consistent, modifiable, and traceable.

Limit inspection sessions to 10-20 pages because defect detection drops sharply after the first hour due to inspector fatigue. Split large specifications into multiple shorter sessions rather than attempting one marathon review meeting.

Reviews fail when they become passive presentations without independent preparation, when too much material is reviewed at once, or when reviewers lack a defect checklist. Requiring preparation before meetings and providing a defect taxonomy fixes these problems.

Formal inspection is mandatory for safety-critical systems regardless of team size or schedule constraints, and strongly recommended for business-critical systems with regulatory compliance needs. If resources are limited, conduct the inspection in smaller chunks over more sessions.