Software reliability issues under operational and testing constraints

Software reliability plays an important role in assuring the quality of a software. To ensure software reliability, the software is tested thoroughly during the testing phase. The time invested in the testing phase or the optimal software release time depends on the level of reliability to be achieved. There are two different concepts related to software reliability, viz., testing reliability and operational reliability. In this paper, we compare both types of software reliabilities to determine the optimal testing time of the software so as to minimize the total expected software maintenance cost. We consider a software has a number of clusters of modules, each having a different number of errors and a different failure rate. A hyperexponential model is employed for analyzing software reliability growth. Parameter estimation using the maximum likelihood estimation technique is also discussed. Numerical illustrations are taken to explore the effect of various parameters on reliability and maintenance cost. It is noticed that the operational reliability concept should be adopted for the software testing time problem.