DevCOP: A Software Certificate Management System for Eclipse

During the course of software development, developers will employ several different verification and validation (V&V) practices with their software. However, these efforts might not be recorded or maintained in an effective manner. We have built defect estimation with V&V Certificates on Programming (DevCOP), a software certificate management system. With DevCOP, developers can automatically track and maintain a persistent record of the V&V practices used during development via certificates. With this V&V information, developers and managers can better manage their V&V efforts within a system. Detailed information such as coverage of particular V&V techniques over the system or the amount of V&V performed on a single function can be provided. Developers can also use this V&V information post hoc to see which techniques were more effective at removing defects. In our future work, we are researching a parametric model which utilizes these certificates to estimate defect density as development proceeds