Abstract
After a software inspection the project manager has to decide whether a product has sufficient quality to pass on to the next software development stage or whether a sec-ond inspection cycle, a reinspection, is likely to suffi-ciently improve its quality. The reinspection decision of recent research focused on the estimation of product quality after inspection, which does not take in to account the effect of a reinspection. Thus we propose to use esti-mation models for the quality improvement during rein-spection and the cost and benefit of a reinspection as ba-sis for the reinspection decision.We evaluate the reinspection decision correctness of these models with time-stamped defect data from a large-scale controlled experiment on the inspection and reinspection of a software requirements document. The main finding of the investigation is that the product-quality criterion is likely to force products to be rein-spected, if a large number of defects were detected in the first inspection. Further the product-quality criterion is especially sensitive to an underestimation of the number of defects in the product and will let bad products pass as good. The cost-benefit criterion is less sensitive to estima-tion error than the product-quality criterion and should in practice be used as second opinion, if a product-quality criterion is applied.