The impact of software enhancement on software reliability

This paper exploits the `relationship between functional-enhancement (FE) activity and the distribution of software defects´ to develop a discriminant model that identifies high-risk program modules, `FE activity´ and `defect data captured during the FE of a commercial programming language processing utility´ serve to fit and test the predictive quality of this model. The model misclassification rates demonstrate that FE information is sufficient for developing discriminant models identifying high-risk program modules. Consideration of the misclassified functions leads us to suggest that: (1) the level of routines in the calling hierarchy introduces variation in defect distribution; and (2) the impact of a defect indicates the risk that it presents. Thus consideration of defect impact can improve the discriminant results