(An) effective software reliability assessment process for weapon system development

Abstract

Software reliability has been regarded as one of the most important quality attributes for software intensive systems, especially in defense domain. As most of the complicated functionalities and controls of weapon systems are implemented by the software embedded in the hardware systems, it has become more critical to assure high reliability for the software itself. However, many software development organizations in the Korean defense domain have focused on hardware reliability based on a RAM (Reliability, Availability and Maintainability) guideline. Also, the study on software reliability assurance throughout the system development lifecycle has been recently initiated. In addition, existing software reliability assessment processes focus only on the reliability evaluation in terms of product and reliability estimation based on faults after the testing stage. However, to acquire and implement reliable software, we need the efforts for assuring process quality as well as product quality in the whole software development life cycle. In this thesis, we propose an effective SRAP (Software Reliability Assessment Process) to assure the software reliability of weapon systems in the Korean defense domain. The process provides guidelines for software reliability evaluation to software organizations. Furthermore, the process pursues improvements to software engineering processes which support activities and indicators for quantitative project management in the software development process. A validation of this process is provided by analyzing effectiveness with application of SRAP. Moreover, this thesis includes the usage for application of SRAP and the illustration of empirical improvements resulting from the application of SRAP. The contributions of SRAP can be categorized into three aspects; process, product, and social aspect. First of all, in the process aspect, quantitative project management is available by using data that is collected based on the metri...