Rigorous Review Technique

The Rigorous Review Technique (RRT) emerged from a research project estabiished between Leeds Metropolitan University (at that time called Leeds Polytechnic) and British Telecom (BT). In the late 1980s a small group of researchers at LMU started work on the integration of formal and structured approaches, with the objective of finding ways in which the two forms could complement each other. This would allow the strengths of the differing approaches to be combined within an integrated method. The strength of the structured methods derived from their concern for software management and productivity; stressing the planning, monitoring and control aspects of software production on a large scale. Formal methods on the other hand emanated from a focus on reliability and correctness; stressing production of error-free code, developed through use of formal languages and specification techniques, incorporating proofs based on mathematical models. Our aim and intention was to harness the reasoning power of the mathematically-based specification to the management and project-based discipline of structured development.