Analysis of software experience data (Panel Discussion)
1978
Failure ratio and failure rate are identified as significant measures of software reliability during development. Month-to-month variability is shown to be comparable to that for hardware reliability measures. Module-to-module variability for a given development environment is surprisingly small. Trend lines on failure ratio and failure rate yield a progress index of considerable interest to management. The data collection and analysis procedure will be described. Some surprising results were obtained when causes of failure were examined.