Software reliability assurance in early development phases: a case study in an industrial setting

The the quality (functionality and reliability) assurance testing of a new software product/release is a challenging task. Written from an industrial perspective, this paper provides an overview of the "state of practice" of the software industry, and then describes a study looking at the utility of code coverage to support and improve the testing process. The study involves the development of a new release of a large scale commercial product. We report on the information collected to date, what it reveals about testing in this environment and the tool that was used. We conclude with some lessons learned and directions for future work.