Reexamining the fault density component size connection
Les Hatton · IEEE Software · 1997
In software engineering, the lack of experimental evidence often means that anecdotal, intuitive, or sometimes just plain commercial arguments become surprisingly well-entrenched. Conventional wisdom, that smaller components contain relatively fewer faults may be wrong. The author found that medium-sized components were proportionately more reliable than small or large ones. Moreover, he says, there may be limits on the fault density we can achieve.