Abstract
Software reliability is one of the most important characteristics of software quality. Its measurement and management technologies during the software life-cycle are essential to produce and maintain quality/reliable software systems. In this paper, we discuss software reliability modeling to describe a software fault-detection or software failure-occurrence phenomenon during the testing and operation phases and to assess software reliability quantitatively. A software failure is defined as an unacceptable departure of the program operation caused by software faults introduced in the development process. In particular, hazard rate models and NHPP(non-homogeneous Poisson process) models are investigated as useful software reliability growth models which formulate the relationship between the cumulative number of faults detected by the testing(or the time-interval between software failures) and the time span of the testing. Two software management problems are also discussed as application of software reliability models : Statistical testing-progress control and maintenance cost optimization. Further, numerical illustrations for the software reliability analysis and the software management problems are presented.
