Optimal testing resource allocation during module testing considering cost, testing effort and reliability

Software reliability is one of the most important quality attributes of commercial software. During software testing, software reliability growth models (SRGMs) are commonly used to describe the phenomenon of failure occurrence and/or fault removal which consequently enhancements software reliability. Large software systems are developed by integrating a number of relatively small and independent modules, which are tested independently during module testing phase. The amount of testing resource available is limited which is desired to be consumed judiciously so as to optimize the testing process. In this paper we formulate a resource allocation problem of minimizing the cost of software testing under available amount of testing resource, given a reliability constraint. We use a flexible SRGM considering testing effort which, depending upon the values of parameters, can describe either exponential or S-shaped failure pattern of software modules. A systematic and sequential Algorithm is proposed to solve the optimization problem formulated. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the formulation and solution procedures. Sensitivity analysis is performed to examine the behavior of some parameters of SRGM with most significant influence. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.