Cost-Reliability-Optimal Release Time of Software with Patching Considered

Abstract

Testing life cycle poses a problem of achieving a high level of software reliability while achieving an optimal release time for the software. To enhance the reliability of the software, retain the market potential for the software and reduce the testing cost, the enterprise needs to know when to release the software and when to stop testing. To achieve this, enterprises usually release their product earlier in market and then release patches subsequently. Software patching is a process through which enterprises debug, update, or enhance their software. Software patching when used as a debugging process ensures an optimal release for the product, increasing the reliability of the software while reducing the economic overhead of testing. Today, due to the diverse and distributed nature of software, its journey in the market is dynamic, making patching an inherent aspect of testing. A patch is a piece of software designed to update a computer program or its supporting data to fix or improve it. Researchers have worked in the field to minimize the testing cost, but so far, reliability has not been considered in the models for optimal time scheduling using patching. In this paper, we discuss reliability, which is a major attribute of the quality of software. Thus, to address the issues of testing cost, release time of software, and a desirable reliability level, we propose a reliability growth model implementing software patching to make the software system reliable and cost effective. The numeric illustration has been implemented using real-life software failure data set.

Generalized software release and testing stop time policy

“…This phenomenon suggested that release and testing stop time should be different. Few recent studies (Jiang et al , 2012; Kapur and Shrivastava, 2015; Anand et al , 2017; Kapur et al , 2017; Kumar et al , 2018) used this idea to propose a new framework for developing a cost model to determine separate release and testing stop time. But all these studies were having strong assumptions of perfect debugging and with no change point that seems unrealistic in practicality.…”

“…Sachdeva et al (2018b) proposed a cost framework to separately optimize both times to stop testing and release time of software under warranty by assuming that testing continues beyond software release time. Kumar et al (2018) proposed a cost and reliability-based model to optimize the release and testing stop time. Anand et al (2019) proposed a framework to determine the software-patching schedule.…”

Measuring software reliability under the influence of an infected patch

“…They proposed a scheduling policy for a software product and showed the importance of patching in lowering the system outages and making the system more cost effective. Kumar et al [24] discussed the reliability, which is a major attribute of the quality of a software, to address the issues of testing cost, release time of software, and a desirable reliability level. Kumar et al [24] developed a reliability growth model implementing software patching to make the software system reliable and cost effective.…”

“…Kumar et al [24] discussed the reliability, which is a major attribute of the quality of a software, to address the issues of testing cost, release time of software, and a desirable reliability level. Kumar et al [24] developed a reliability growth model implementing software patching to make the software system reliable and cost effective. Tickoo et al [34] have proposed a testing effort based cost model to determine the optimal release time and patch time of a software.…”

Software warranty cost optimization under imperfect debugging

“…Though a number of optimal release planning models have been proposed in the literature to determine software release time, very few of them incorporate the effect of warranty on release management (Kapur et al , 2017; Kumar et al , 2018; Okumoto and Goel, 1979). In this paper, we aim to address this research gap.…”