Determination of software release instant using a nonhomogeneous error detection rate model
Abstract The nonhomogeneous error detection rate model has been extensively used in software reliability modelling. An important management responsibility is to make a decision about the release of software, so as to result in maximum cost effectiveness. It is well known that the effort for correction of an error increases, rather heavily, from an initial testing phase to a final testing phase and then to the operational phase. In this paper, a method is presented to systematically determine this optimum release instant. The fact that some faults can be regenerated during the process of correction has also been considered in the modelling—this has been ignored in previous literature. Also, the partition of the testing phase into initial and final phases is considered to be desirable as effort per error correction will be significantly different in these two phases. An example illustrates the entire procedure for various values of the total number of errors and the trends of cost and release time.