Effort-based software release and testing stop time decisions

Abstract

To remain competitive and at the same time to satisfy the users' desire, these days software organisations are releasing the software early and removing the remaining number of bugs based on users' feedback or report in the post-release testing phase. Early release may affect software performance due to inadequate elimination of faults due to which the manufacturer may bear post-release cost of fixing the undetected faults. On the other hand, late release may increase the risk of more failures in the functioning environment. Software reliability can be achieved by efficient testing and testing is directly proportional to testing effort/resources consumed. In this paper, we propose a testing effort-based cost model to determine the optimal release and testing stop time and corresponding optimal effort consumed by minimising the total cost. Numerical illustration is done to validate the proposed cost model.