The Inspection Rate is a process metric used to measure the efficiency of the review or inspection process. It is calculated by dividing the total volume of the work product inspected by the total time (effort) spent on the inspection. In this scenario, the work product is the number of requirements, and the time is measured in hours. The number of defects found is used to calculate other metrics, such as Defect Discovery Rate or Defect Density, but not the Inspection Rate itself.

The calculation is as follows:

Inspection Rate = Total Requirements Inspected / Total Hours Spent

Inspection Rate = 1546 / 54 ≈ 28.63 requirements per hour.

B. 3.05: This figure does not represent a logical calculation based on the standard formulas for inspection metrics using the data provided.

C. 20.02: This figure is an incorrect calculation and does not align with any standard inspection or quality assurance metric.

D. 8.17: This value represents the Defect Discovery Rate (441 defects / 54 hours), which measures how many defects are found per hour, not the rate of inspection.

1. Humphrey, W. S. (1995). A Discipline for Software Engineering. Addison-Wesley Professional.

Reference: Chapter 8, "The Design and Code Review," Section 8.4, "The Review Measures." Humphrey defines the review rate as the size of the product being reviewed divided by the time spent in the review (e.g., Lines of Code per hour). This principle directly applies to the question, where the work product is "requirements." The formula is Size/Time. (Page 168).

2. Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. (2010). The Personal Software Process (PSP) Body of Knowledge, Version 2.0.

Reference: Section A.4.3, "Process Measures." The document defines "Review Rate" as "The size of the product reviewed divided by the time spent in the review." This confirms the correct formula is (Volume of work) / (Time), which in this case is 1546 requirements / 54 hours. (Page 100).

3. Radice, R. A. (2002). High-Quality, Low-Cost Software Inspections. Paradoxicon Publishing.

Reference: Chapter 10, "Inspection Data and Analysis." The book discusses various inspection metrics, including the inspection rate, which is consistently defined as the amount of material inspected per unit of time (e.g., pages/hour, KLOC/hour). This supports the calculation used to arrive at the correct answer. (Page 215).