Empirically based analysis of failures in software systems

Author

Selby, Richard W.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Inf. & Comput. Sci., California Univ., Irvine, CA, USA

Volume

39

Issue

4

fYear

1990

fDate

10/1/1990 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

444

Lastpage

454

Abstract

An empirical analysis of failures in software systems is used to evaluate several specific issues and questions in software testing, reliability analysis, and reuse. The issues examined include the following: diminishing marginal returns of testing; effectiveness of multiple fault-detection and testing phases; measuring system reliability versus function or component reliability; developer bias regarding the amount of testing that functions or components will receive; fault-proneness of reused versus newly developed software; and the relationship between degree of reuse and development effort and fault-proneness. Failure data from a large software manufacturer and a NASA production environment were collected and analyzed

Keywords

program testing; software reliability; software reusability; NASA; analysis of failures; component reliability; developer bias; development effort; diminishing marginal returns; fault-proneness; multiple fault-detection; reuse; software systems; system reliability; testing phases; Failure analysis; Manufacturing; NASA; Phase measurement; Production; Reliability; Software measurement; Software systems; Software testing; System testing;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Reliability, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9529

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/24.58722

Filename

58722