A decision-analytic stopping rule for validation of commercialsoftware systems
Chavez, T.
Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on
Volume 26, Issue 9, Sep 2000 Page(s):907 - 918
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/32.877849
Summary:The decision of when to release a software product commercially is
not a question of when the software has attained some objectively
justifiable degree of correctness. It is, rather, a question of whether
the software achieves a reasonable balance among engineering objectives,
market demand, customer requirements, and marketing directives of the
software organization. We present a rigorous framework for addressing
this important decision. Conjugate distributions from statistical
decision theory provide an attractive means of modeling the cost and
rate of bugs given information acquired during software testing, as well
as prior information provided by software engineers about the fidelity
of the software before testing begins. In contrast to other methods, the
stopping analysis yields a computationally simple rule for deciding when
to release a commercial software product based on information revealed
to engineers during software testing-complicated numerical procedures
are not needed. Our method has the added benefits that it is sequential:
it measures explicitly the costs of customer dissatisfaction associated
with bugs as well as the costs of declining market position while the
testing process continues; and it incorporates a practical framework for
cost-criticality assessment that makes sense to professional software
developers
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