A covariate software tool to guide test activity allocation

Abstract

This paper presents the Covariate Software Failure and Reliability Assessment Tool (C-SFRAT) to automatically apply methods from software reliability engineering to accurately characterize the defect discovery process in terms of the test activities performed. The tool enables calculations and visualizations, including plots of the defect discovery data, covariate models fit to this data, and inferences made possible by these models as well as assessment of model goodness-of-fit. A generalized optimization procedure, referred to as the test activity allocation problem, has been implemented to guide the distribution of limited resources among specific test activities in order to maximize defect discovery for corrective action and improved reliability. The application and source code are freely available from the GitHub repository dedicated to this project. The open source nature of this tool will enable collaboration among researchers and practitioners from industry and government within a single shared platform.

Keywords

• Software reliability
• Software reliability growth model
• Covariates
• Test activity allocation