A generalized framework for multi release of a software under Distributed Environment

Abstract

Current Market conditions do not allow the developer to spend too much time to build a software. Due to the fast changing technology, the fear that software might get obsolete also frights the developers. These concerns and the prevailing cut throat contention gave rise to distributed development strategies. Distributed development environment is a general phenomenon in today's software industry. Also, developers prefer to follow a multi release policy by introducing multiple upgraded versions of a software instead of delivering the entire product at one go. But the added functionalities further increase the existing complexity of the software and testing team may not be able to perfectly remove the faults leading to imperfect debugging or add more bugs due to lack of knowledge about the software in the initial phase known as error generation. We incorporated this real life phenomenon of imperfect debugging in multi-up gradations of software developed under distributed environment. Further we have proposed a generalized cost model for Multi-Up gradations of software developed in Distributed Environment under the effect of imperfect debugging. In multiple versions of software each version has its testing cost and reliability. For obtaining the optimal testing time in order to get the best reliable software with limited resources we have applied Multi Attribute Utility Theory by taking the convex combination of testing cost and reliability in multiple versions of software. To validate the analytical results of the proposed framework, numerical illustration is provided.