Assessing Software Reliability using Inter Failures Time Data

Abstract

For critical business applications continuous availability is a requirement. Software reliability is an important component of continuous application availability. A single software defect can cause a system failure. To avoid these failures, reliable software is required. Due to schedule pressure, resource limitations, and unrealistic requirements in software development process, developing reliable software is difficult. To monitor software process variations and to improve reliability, the statistical Process Control (SPC) can be applied to software development process. SPC is a methodology that aims to provide process control in statistical terms. Control charts are the most common tools for determining whether a software process is under statistically control or not. In this paper we proposed a control mechanism, based on time between failures observations using exponential distribution, which is based on Non Homogeneous Poisson Process (NHPP).

Reference

• Florac, W.A., Carleton, A.D., “Measuring The Software Process:” Addison-wesley Professional, Jul 1999
• Goel, A.L., Okumoto, K., 1979. Time-dependent error-detection rate model for software reliability and other performance measures. IEEE Trans. Reliab. R-28, 206-211.
• Kimura, M., Yamada, S., Osaki, S., 1995. ”Statistical Software reliability prediction and its applicability based on mean time between failures”. Mathematical and Computer Modelling,Volume 22, Issues 10-12, Pages 149-155.
• Koutras, M.V., Bersimis, S., Maravelakis,P.E., 2007. “Statistical process control using shewart control charts with supplementary Runs rules” Springer Science Business media 9:207-224.
• MacGregor, J.F., Kourti, T., 1995. “Statistical process control of multivariate processes”. Control Engineering Practice Volume 3, Issue 3, March 1995, Pages 403-414 .
• Musa, J.D, Software Reliability Engineering McGraw-Hill, 1998
• Musa, J.D., Iannino, A., Okumoto, k., 1987. “Software Reliability: Measurement Prediction Application”. McGraw-Hill, New York.
• M.Xie, T.N. Goh, P.Ranjan, “Some effective control chart procedures for reliability monitoring” , Elsevier, Reliability engineering and System safety (2002).
• Ohba, M., 1984. “Software reliability analysis model”. IBM J. Res. Develop. 28, 428-443.
• Pham. H., 2003. “Handbook of Reliability Engineering”, Springer.
• Pham. H., 2006. “System software reliability”, Springer.
• Swapna S. Gokhale and Kishore S.Trivedi, 1998. “Log-Logistic Software Reliability Growth Model”. The 3rd IEEE International Symposium on High-Assurance Systems Engineering. IEEE Computer Society.

Index Terms

Key words