User-perceptions of embedded software reliability

Many researchers and practitioners have recognised that the perception of ‘reliability’ is largely influenced by personal view and application context. Depending on personal goals, interests and background, the interpretation of the reliability concept is, different per individual. Industrial organisations try to fulfil user-needs regarding reliability but those reliability requirements are not as unambiguous as they should be. Therefore most industrial organisations fall back to a zero-defects approach, which implies a focus on fault detection instead of fulfilling user requirements. This in itself is not sufficient. In this paper, an approach is suggested by which the different user perceptions on reliability are modelled, and can be addressed. This Multi-party Chain model supports the explanation of the various views on product reliability of all users. Discussion among the parties involved is therefore enabled. Based on consensus the appropriate measures can be selected. The model should operationalise the basic relation between process and product, it enables the definition of metrics to evaluate process improvements, and links engineering activities to user requirements. The usefulness of the model is validated in a case-study