Other practices that I may recommend
If your organization is not yet ready to try an approach as comprehensive as Cleanroom, there are simpler defect-prevention practices that can give you significant benefits. Depending on what your organization is doing now, the capabilities of your people, and the results you need, I might recommend such practices as:
- Informal peer review of code. If you aren't doing at least this much, you should be! It is an easy first step, requiring little training, and is very cost-effective. Peer review of other artifacts (requirements, designs, test plans, documentation, and so on) is also a very good idea.
- Systematic inspections of code and other artifacts. This is the "professional edition" of peer review, with well-defined procedures to follow, roles for participants, and so on. As a defect-control tactic, inspection is much more effective and cost-effective than putting the same effort into more testing and debugging later, and it is an excellent training tool as well.
On the other hand, your situation may call for even more sophisticated techniques, such as:
- Rigorous mathematics-based techniques (sometimes called "formal methods") for specifying and developing software. An example is development using the Z specification notation.
I can help you introduce any of these practices, or Cleanroom, or other modern software engineering practices into your organization. If necessary, the introduction can be gradual, to help spread the effort over time and minimize disruption to your current process.