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To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2005.12.006 Byline: Jung-Hua Lo (a), Chin-Yu Huang (b) Keywords: Software fault detection and correction processes; Non-homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP); Mean value function (MVF); Software reliability growth model (SRGM) Abstract: Software reliability is defined as the probability of failure-free software operation for a specified period of time in a specified environment and is widely recognized as one of the most significant aspects of software quality. Over the past 30 years, many software reliability growth models (SRGMs) have been proposed and they can greatly help us to estimate some important measures such as the mean time to failure, the number of remaining faults, defect levels, and the failure intensity, etc. Besides, SRGMs can also help to determine person power needed to support the desired reliability requirements. However, from our studies, most of SRGMs only focus on describing the behavior of fault detection process and assume that faults are fixed immediately upon detection. In fact, this assumption may not be realistic. Thus, in this paper, we will propose a general framework for modeling the software fault detection and correction processes. We will also show that the proposed approaches cover a number of well-known SRGMs. Two numerical examples based on two real software failure data sets are presented and discussed in detail. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Information Management, Lan Yang Institute of Technology, ILan, Taiwan (b) Department of Computer Science, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan Article History: Received 2 August 2004; Revised 6 December 2005; Accepted 10 December 2005

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2005.06.039 Byline: Chin-Yu Huang (a), Jung-Hua Lo (b) Keywords: Software reliability; Software cost; Sensitivity analysis; Resource allocation problem; Dynamic programming Abstract: Reliability is one of the most important quality attributes of commercial software since it quantifies software failures during the development process. In order to increase the reliability, we should have a comprehensive test plan that ensures all requirements are included and tested. In practice, software testing must be completed within a limited time and project managers should know how to allocate the specified testing-resources among all the modules. In this paper, we present an optimal resource allocation problem in modular software systems during testing phase. The main purpose is to minimize the cost of software development when the fixed amount of testing-effort and a desired reliability objective are given. An elaborated optimization algorithm based on the Lagrange multiplier method is proposed and numerical examples are illustrated. Moreover, sensitivity analysis is also conducted. We analyze the sensitivity of parameters of proposed software reliability growth models and show the results in detail. The experimental results greatly help us to identify the contributions of each selected parameter and its weight. The proposed algorithm and method can facilitate the allocation of limited testing-resource efficiently and thus the desired reliability objective during software module testing can be better achieved. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Computer Science, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan (b) Department of Information Management, Lan Yang Institute of Technology, I-Land, Taiwan Article History: Received 12 October 2004; Revised 13 June 2005; Accepted 18 June 2005