Software reliability modeling by concatenating failure rates

The concatenation of failure rate functions results in point process models that need not possess independent increments, or lack memory features of Poisson processes. Processes having a memory are more realistic as compared to those that do not, and as a consequence provide a credible framework for tracking reliability and predicting failure times. The purpose of the paper is to propose and describe a model for software reliability based on this paradigm. The proposed model is adaptive, can explain empirically observed phenomena, and outperforms the predictive ability of its competitors. The model and its inferential mechanism are complex, but software to implement it with ease, is available.