Prediction of Field Failures using Pre-release Defect Data
George Stark and Hema Srikanth
The 17th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE 2006) -- Industry Practices (ISSRE 2006)
Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, 6-10 November 2006
Abstract
ABSTRACT A software quality program generally includes both work product inspections and testing as a means to increase the reliability of the resulting operational system. Inspections have been shown to be an effective means of improving quality on software projects. In fact, some researchers have demonstrated that inspections are more effective than functional and/or structural testing at identifying defects, and lead to better code quality. Because inspections are static in nature, testing is still required to identify operational system failures and “kick the tires” on software product performance and usability. In this paper we use in process fault statistics obtained through inspections and independent testing on more than 100 completed projects to predict field release quality and product development duration. Our analysis includes prediction of field faults identified in the first 12 months of operation based on in-process faults found in the development and test phase. The results will be submitted as part of the slides. Additionally, we analyzed these projects to identify the efficiency in defect detection as a result of incorporating inspection in software process. Defect detection efficiency was computed by dividing the defects found during inspection phase with the total defects found for the project. The total defects for the project comprised of inspection activities (concept, requirements, design, and code), system verification test activities, and the coding errors found. Our results show that for 54% of the total projects, defect detection during inspection phase was at least 60% or higher. For 20% of the projects, the defect detection efficiency during inspection phase was at least 90% which implies that at least 90% of the total defects for these projects were found as a result of inspection. Our results show that inspections result in improved defect detection and reduced the overall project duration.