Optimal stopping of multi-project software testing in the context of software cybernetics

Software cybernetics explores the interplay between control theory/engineering and software theory/engineering. The controlled Markov chains (CMC) approach to software testing follows the idea of software cybernetics and treats software testing as a control problem. The software under test serves as a controlled object and the software testing strategy serves as the corresponding controller. The software under test and the software testing strategy make up a closed-loop feedback control system, and the theory of controlled Markov chains can be used to design and optimize software testing strategies in accordance with testing/reliability goals given a priori. In this paper we apply the CMC approach to the optimal stopping problem of multi-project software testing. The problem under consideration assumes that a single stopping action can stop testing of all the software systems under test simultaneously. The theoretical results presented in this paper describe how to test multiple software systems and whe