Optimal testing-time allocation for modular systems

Software testing is usually a very costly and time-consuming phase in software development. As most software systems are modular, it is of great importance for the management to allocate the limited testing-time among the software modules in an optimal way so that the highest quality and reliability of the complete system can be achieved. In this paper, the problem of optimal testing-time allocation for modular software systems is studied. A generic formulation of the problem is presented based on nonhomogeneous Poisson process models. The aim is to maximize the operational reliability of the software system. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the optimisation algorithm and the solution. Furthermore, as software reliability growth models consist of a number of parameters, an example of a sensitivity analysis is also shown. Such a sensitivity study is useful as important model parameters can be identified given more attention.