Development of software reliability growth model incorporating enhancement of features and related release policy

Abstract

The software industry can be considered as the typical high technology industry where rate of innovation and knowledge creation plays a pivotal role for continued firm growth. In the last few decades it has been observed that the world of software development management has evolved rapidly due to the intensified market competition. In particular the use of feature-addition model of software products in the industry is fast becoming the commonplace. The up-gradation model can be characterized by increasing the number of features in the software that will give the firm competitive edge in the market. The up-gradation of the system is done by extending it through add-ons, interfacing with other applications, etc. Continuous up-gradation of software’s also brings complexity in the systems once it failed to work properly. In recent years, there has been a growing interest to predict the link between the rates of failure and the reliability of software. Many software reliability growth models (SRGM) have been proposed over past three decades that estimate the reliability of a software system as it undergoes changes through the removal of failure causing faults. But unfortunately most of the models did not consider anything about the increase in failure rate once an up-gradation is made on the software. The objective of this paper is to propose the software reliability growth model that incorporates the effect of enhancement of features on software during testing and debugging process. In addition, we have also discussed the related optimal release time policy that minimizes the total cost.