Inspection of software design and code was first proposed by Michael Fagan in "Design and Code Inspections to Reduce Errors in Program Development," IBM Systems Journal, July 1976. Inspection can account for as much as 82 percent of all errors found in software. Inspection is much better than testing for finding errors. Define criteria for completing an inspection. Keep track of the types of errors found through inspection. Fagan's inspections consume approximately 15 percent of development resources with a net reduction in total development cost of 25 to 30 percent.
A project schedule should account for the time to inspect, and correct, every component. It might seem that a project cannot tolerate such "luxuries." However, inspection should not be considered a luxury. Data has shown that you can even reduce the time to test by 50 to 90 percent. If that's not incentive, I don't know what could be. By the way, there is a wealth of support data and tips on how to do inspections well in "Key Lessons in Achieving Widespread Inspection Use," IEEE Software, July 1994 by R. Grady and T. VanSlack.
