Abstract. Faults introduced into systems during development are costly to fix, and especially so for business-critical systems. These systems are developed using common development practices, but have high requirements for dependability. This paper reports on an ongoing investigation of fault reports from Norwegian IT companies, where the aim is to seek a better understanding on faults that have been found during development and how this may affect the quality of the system. Our objective in this paper is to investigate the fault profiles of four business-critical commercial projects to explore if there are differences in the way faults appear in different systems. We have conducted an empirical study by collecting fault reports from several industrial projects, comparing findings from projects where components and reuse have been core strategies with more traditional development projects. Findings show that some specific fault types are generally dominant across reports from all projects, and that some fault types are rated as more severe than others.
In this paper, we describe our experience with using problem reports from industry for quality assessment. The non-uniform terminology used in problem reports and validity concerns have been subject of earlier research but are far from settled. To distinguish between terms such as defects or errors, we propose to answer three questions on the scope of a study related to what (problem appearance or its cause), where (problems related to software; executable or not; or system), and when (problems recorded in all development life cycles or some of them). Challenges in defining research questions and metrics, collecting and analyzing data, generalizing the results and reporting them are discussed. Ambiguity in defining problem report fields and missing, inconsistent or wrong data threatens the value of collected evidence. Some of these concerns could be settled by answering some basic questions related to the problem reporting fields and improving data collection routines and tools.
Abstract. Improving software processes relies on the ability to analyze previous projects and derive which parts of the process that should be focused on for improvement. All software projects encounter software faults during development and have to put much effort into locating and fixing these. A lot of information is produced when handling faults, through fault reports. This paper reports a study of fault reports from industrial projects, where we seek a better understanding of faults that have been reported during development and how this may affect the quality of the system. We investigated the fault profiles of five business-critical industrial projects by data mining to explore if there were significant trends in the way faults appear in these systems. We wanted to see if any types of faults dominate, and whether some types of faults were reported as being more severe than others. Our findings show that one specific fault type is generally dominant across reports from all projects, and that some fault types are rated as more severe than others. From this we could propose that the organization studied should increase effort in the design phase in order to improve software quality.
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