Metrics improvement for Phase Containment Effectiveness in automotive software development process

Aiming to identify any errors in the same phase where they were introduced, rigorous verification is needed at the end of every phase of the software development process. Escaped faults involve higher costs, longer delivery time and even poorer public image. Phase Containment Effectiveness (PCE) is a flexible metric providing the ability of improving this essential development process. We here proposed two different applications of PCE in automotive industry: one for development phases and the other for test phases. Wishing to assure a better consistency between PCE for Development and PCE for Testing, the paper proposes a different approach based on the identification and consideration of only the defects discovered by testing which are directly related with at least one of the development phases. The acquired advantages are demonstrated by a detailed example of real application.