Quantifying software reliability and readiness

As the industry moves to more mature software processes (e.g., CMMI) there is increased need to adopt more rigorous, sophisticated (i.e., quantitative) metrics. While quantitative product readiness criteria are often used for business cases and related areas, software readiness is often assessed more subjectively & qualitatively. Quite often there is no explicit linkage to original performance and reliability requirements for the software. The criteria are primarily process-oriented (versus product oriented) and/or subjective. Such an approach to deciding software readiness increases the risk of poor field performance and unhappy customers. Unfortunately, creating meaningful and useful quantitative in-process metrics for software development has been notoriously difficult. This paper describes novel and quantitative software readiness criteria to support objective and effective decision-making at product shipment. The method organizes and streamlines existing quality and reliability data into a simple metric and visualizations that are applicable across products and releases. The methodology amalgamates two schools of thoughts in quantitative terms: product and process parameters that have been adequately represented to formalize the software readiness index. Parameters from all aspects of software development life cycle (e.g., requirements, project management & resources, development & testing, audits & assessments, stability and reliability, and technical documentation) that could impact the readiness index are considered.