Software Reliability reviews some fundamental issues of software reliability as well as the techniques, models, and metrics used to predict the reliability of software. Topics covered include fault avoidance, fault removal, and fault tolerance, along with statistical methods for the objective assessment of predictive accuracy. Development cost models and life-cycle cost models are also discussed. This book is divided into eight sections and begins with a chapter on adaptive modeling used to predict software reliability, followed by a discussion on failure rate in software reliability growth models. The next chapter deals with methods for predicting and estimating software reliability, with emphasis on their strengths and weaknesses. The reader is methodically introduced to formal inspection in software development; the effects of product design, program structure, development methods, and the environments of product testing and use on product reliability; and types of software metrics in relation to reliability. The remaining chapters explore the ways in which software engineers have sought to achieve software reliability through testing; problems and standards in software reliability data collection; and applications of time series models to software reliability analysis. This monograph will be of interest to software engineers and designers.

Although software engineering can trace its beginnings to a NATO conf- ence in 1968, it cannot be said to have become an empirical science until the 1970s with the advent of the work of Prof. Victor Robert Basili of the University of Maryland. In addition to the need to engineer software was the need to understand software. Much like other sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and biology, software engineering needed a discipline of obs- vation, theory formation, experimentation, and feedback. By applying the scientific method to the software engineering domain, Basili developed concepts like the Goal-Question-Metric method, the Quality-Improvement- Paradigm, and the Experience Factory to help bring a sense of order to the ad hoc developments so prevalent in the software engineering field. On the occasion of Basili’s 65th birthday, we present this book c- taining reprints of 20 papers that defined much of his work. We divided the 20 papers into 6 sections, each describing a different facet of his work, and asked several individuals to write an introduction to each section. Instead of describing the scope of this book in this preface, we decided to let one of his papers, the keynote paper he gave at the International C- ference on Software Engineering in 1996 in Berlin, Germany to lead off this book. He, better than we, can best describe his views on what is - perimental software engineering.

"This tutorial volume on productivity issues for the eighties attempts to place programming in context with other disciplines, and address five major topis: programming measurements, programming life--cycle analysis, programming equipment and design methods, programming environmental and the new science of software." Abstract