Long Term Software Quality and Reliability Assurance in a Small Company

Demonstrating software reliability across multiple software releases has become essential in making informed decisions of upgrading software releases without impacting significantly end users\u27 characterized processes and software quality standards. Standard defect and workload data normally collected in a typical small software development organization can be used for this purpose. Objective of this study was to demonstrate how to measure software reliability in multiple releases and whether continuous defect fixes and code upgrades increased software reliability. This study looked at techniques such as trend test that evaluated software system\u27s overall trend and stability, input domain reliability models (IDRM) that assessed system\u27s operational reliability, software reliability growth models (SRGM) that tracked system\u27s reliability growth, and orthogonal defect classification (ODC) that provided in-process feedback for focused defect removal and quality improvement