Formal Inspection was pioneered in the seventies by M.E. Fagan at IBM. He published about it in IBM Systems Journal in 1976. A reprint can be found in IBM Systems Journal Vol 38, nr. 2&3: "Turning Points in Computing 1962~1999". The reprint, "Design and code inspections to reduce errors in program development" is retrievable from internet (.pdf; 7,01 Mb). Since then, a lot of experience has been gained on the techniques of Inspections. NASA has a very useful "Software Formal Inspections Guidebook" and a "Software Formal Inspections Standard". You can find links to these documents on my books and literature page. A very useful guide for Inspections (with a big I) is the book by Tom Gilb en Dorothy Graham "Software Inspections". The word "Software" could have been omitted: Inspections are by no means limited to software. Without the "software" the book would however not sell as well and let's be frank, in the field of software, Inspections are probably most needed. The authors cover in great detail all steps which make the Inspection process so valuable. Some chapters describe the experience of Inspection in various organisations. After having read this book, you will ask yourself how you ever could have done without Inspections. The question is not any more whether Inspections should become a standard part of your development process, nor when. Only how. Answering this question with you is our job!

In the Gilb/Graham book you will find a complete set of forms for Inspections. You can order this book from Amazon.com.
We have built extensive experience with the Gilb Inspection method and the documents we are using are:

Newest versions of Inspection documents as used by N R Malotaux in Gilb Document Inspections:

Download Inspection Manual (Version 0.44, .pdf, 164kb)
Download Inspection Master Plan (.doc, 47kb)
Download Data Summary, logging sheet, brainstorm sheet (.xls, 72 kb)
Download Slides "Document Inspections" (.zip, 227 kb > .pdf), 2001 version

Download Two day Review course (.pdf, 2446 kb) as used at a client in October 2007