Statistical software reliability prediction and its applicability based on mean time between failures

One of the most important issues for a development manager may be how to predict the reliability of a software system at an arbitrary testing time. In this paper, using the software failure-occurrence time data, we discuss a method of software reliability prediction based on software reliability growth models described by an NHPP (nonhomogeneous Poisson process). From the applied software reliability growth models, the conditional probability distribution of the time between software failures is derived, and its mean and median are obtained as reliability prediction measures. Finally, based on several numerical examples, we compare the performance between these measures from the view point of software reliability prediction in the testing phase.