A bayesian belief network based model for predicting software faults in early phase of software development process

Abstract

It is always better to have an idea about the future situation of a present work. Prediction of software faults in the early phase of software development life cycle can facilitate to the software personnel to achieve their desired software product. Early prediction is of great importance for optimizing the development cost of a software project. The present study proposes a methodology based on Bayesian belief network, developed to predict total number of faults and to reach a target value of total number of faults during early development phase of software lifecycle. The model has been carried out using the information from similar or earlier version software projects, domain expert’s opinion and the software metrics. Interval type-2 fuzzy logic has been applied for obtaining the conditional probability values in the node probability tables of the belief network. The output pattern corresponding to the total number of faults has been identified by artificial neural network using the input pattern from similar or earlier project data. The proposed Bayesian framework facilitates software personnel to gain the required information about software metrics at early phase for achieving targeted number of software faults. The proposed model has been applied on twenty six software project data. Results have been validated by different statistical comparison criterion. The performance of the proposed approach has been compared with some existing early fault prediction models.