The identification of defects in software design is crucial, since these defects can directly affect the quality and effort required for the implementation of the system developed. Various inspection techniques are used to identify the defects in object-oriented software design. Inspection in the early stages of software development helps to improve the quality and reduce rework cost. Identifying the origin of the defect is very challenging if the defect is found at the later stages of software development. This paper identifies the defects created in the artifacts during the design phase of the software development life cycle. The described framework of this paper uses checklist-based approach and metric-based approach to identify the requirement defects and quality defects, respectively. It also describes the techniques to represent identified defects using a defect chart.

Defect detection activity as key part of software inspection is commonly referred as `reading' in software inspection (Laitenberger and Atkinson, 1999; and Dunsmore et al., 2001). Special object-oriented reading techniques have been available since 1998 to inspect Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams with each other and with requirement description to detect defects (Conradi et al., 2003). Horizontal reading techniques are for comparing artifacts from the same development phase such as class diagrams and sequence diagrams developed in design phase. Horizontal reading techniques check the consistency of artifacts. Vertical reading techniques compare artifacts developed in different development phases such as requirements and design. Horizontal reading focuses on completeness of requirements. Thus the main focus of these reading techniques is on different design aspects related to consistency and completeness, but not on quality aspects of design such as reusability, maintainability and extendibility (Travassos et al., 1999 and 2002; and Conradi et al., 2003).

Horizontal and vertical reading techniques help to cover defect space (no. of defects identified) but does not help to meet the quality requirement of design (Travassos et al., 1999). In these reading techniques, it is assumed that use-cases are essentially correct at the time of design. Because of this assumption, defects in use-cases, if any, may lead to defects in design artifacts. Hence, the task of identifying defects cannot be completed without identifying defects in use-cases. This paper not only identifies defects in artifacts but also improves the quality of design.

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