Jul 15, 2026 Pull Request Reviews Catch 15-30% of Defects. The Data Has Said So for 50 Years. Multiple studies across IBM, AT&T, HP, and Microsoft confirm informal code review catches roughly a quarter of defects. fagan-inspectionscode-reviewdatapr-reviews
Jul 14, 2026 A Generic Checklist Catches Nothing. A Structured One Catches 60% of Defects. Most review checklists are copy-pasted lists of good intentions. fagan-inspectionscode-reviewchecklistsstructured-review
Jul 13, 2026 An LLM Can Pre-Inspect Your Code. It Cannot Run the Meeting. Fagan inspections need four to six people and two hours to review 250 lines. fagan-inspectionsllmcode-reviewai-engineering
Jul 12, 2026 Fagan Inspections Found 90% of Defects Before Testing. Then We Stopped Doing Them. Michael Fagan's structured inspection process at IBM caught nearly all defects before they reached a compiler. fagan-inspectionscode-reviewsoftware-historyprocess
Jul 11, 2026 Your Best Reviewer Misses Most Defects. Fagan Measured It at IBM in 1976. Even senior engineers catch only a fraction of defects in unstructured review. fagan-inspectionscode-reviewhuman-factorsdefect-detection
Jul 10, 2026 Most Code Reviews Catch 20% of Defects. Fagan Inspections Catch 90%. Informal code review catches 15-30% of defects. Fagan inspections, a structured 50-year-old process, consistently report 60-90% removal rates. fagan-inspectionscode-reviewdefect-preventionsoftware-quality
May 17, 2026 In the AI Era, Code Review Becomes Specification Review When AI can generate implementation, tests, and contracts from a spec, the highest-leverage human work moves upstream. ai-engineeringcode-reviewspecificationsliving-specificationsci
