Conducting design reviews and inspections is one of the most effective ways of detecting errors during software development. A design review typically consists of a small number of designers, implementers, or other project stakeholders holding a meeting to review a software development artifact. Many development organizations have developed checklists of common design problems for use in design review meetings. Recent research indicated that reviewers inspecting code without meeting, makeing use of these checklists, are just as effective as design review meetings.

Hence, a checklist feature has been added to ArgoUML, that is much in the spirit of design review checklists. However, ArgoUML's checklists are integrated into the design tool user interface and the design task.

A software designer using ArgoUML can see a review checklist for any design element. The “Checklist” tab presents a list of check-off items that is appropriate to the currently selected design element. For example, when a class is selected in a design diagram, the checklist tab shows items that prompt critical thinking about classes. See the figure below. Designers may check off items as they consider them. Checked items are kept in the list to show what has already been considered, while unchecked items prompt the designer to consider new design issues. ArgoUML supplies many different checklists with many possible items.

Figure 13.18.  An example of a checklist for a class.

	Caution
	In the V0.22 release of ArgoUML, this tab is not completely implemented. E.g. the checks are not saved.