Software reliability growth model with change-point and environmental function

This paper presents a SRGM (software reliability growth model) with both change-point and environmental function based on NHPP (non-homogeneous Poisson process). Although a few research projects have been devoted to the change-point problems of SRGMs, consideration of the variation of environmental factors in the existing models during testing time is limited. The proposed model is one of a few NHPP models, which takes environmental factors as a function of testing time. FDR (fault detection rate) is usually used to measure the effectiveness of fault detection by test techniques and test cases. A FDR function after the change-point of the testing is proposed, which is computed from both environmental factors and FDR before the change-point of the testing. A NHPP SRGM with both changepoint and environmental function called CE-SRGM is built which integrates the FDR before the change-point of the testing and the proposed FDR function after the change-point of the testing. CE-SRGM is evaluated using two sets of software failure data. The experimental results show that the predictive power of CE-SRGM is better than those of other SRGMs. 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.