Determining the optimal allocation of testing resource for modular software system using dynamic programming

Khan, Mohammad G.M. and Ahmad, N. and Rafi, Loriza S. (2016) Determining the optimal allocation of testing resource for modular software system using dynamic programming. Communications in Statistics: Theory and Methods, 45 (3). pp. 670-694. ISSN 0361-0926

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Abstract

Reliability is a major concern in the process of software development
because unreliable software can cause failure in the computer system
that can be hazardous. A way to enhance the reliability of software
is to detect and remove the faults during the testing phase, which
begins with module testing wherein modules are tested independently
to remove a substantial number of faults within a limited resource.
Therefore, the available resource must be allocated among the modules
in such a way that the number of faults is removed as much as possible
from each of the modules to achieve higher software reliability. In
this article, we discuss the problem of optimal resource allocation of the
testing resource for a modular software system, which maximizes the
number of faults removed subject to the conditions that the amount
of testing-effort is fixed, a certain percentage of faults is to be removed
and a desired level of reliability is to be achieved. The problem is formulated
as a non linear programming problem (NLPP), which is modeled
by the inflection S-shaped software reliability growth models (SRGM)
based on a non homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP) which incorporates
the exponentiatedWeibull (EW) testing-effort functions.Asolution
procedure is then developed using a dynamic programming technique
to solve the NLPP. Furthermore, three special cases of optimum resource
allocations are also discussed. Finally, numerical examples using three
sets of software failure data are presented to illustrate the procedure
developed and to validate the performance of the strategies proposed
in this article. Experimental results indicate that the proposed strategies
may be helpful to software project managers for making the best decisions
in allocating the testing resource. In addition, the results are compared
with those of Kapur et al. (2004), Huang and Lyu (2005), and Jha
et al. (2010) that are available in the literature to deal the similar problems
addressed in this article. It reveals that the proposed dynamic programming
method for the testing-resource allocation problem yields a gain
in efficiency over other methods.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Computer software
Divisions:	Faculty of Science, Technology and Environment (FSTE) > School of Computing, Information and Mathematical Sciences
Depositing User:	Fulori Nainoca - Waqairagata
Date Deposited:	07 Jul 2016 03:17
Last Modified:	15 Mar 2017 21:45
URI:	https://repository.usp.ac.fj/id/eprint/9044

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