Multi-objective Release Time Problem for Modular Software using Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process

Abstract

The revolutionary evolution of the computers and their advancements has led to an increase of human dependence on them. Their wide utilization in various aspects of everyday activities necessitates the addition of additional features and functionalities to the system. Incorporation of these features makes the software development a complicated and critical task. One approach to ease this process is to design the software in modules manner. Therefore, small modules are incorporated in the software and are evaluated separately instead of the whole software at once. This chapter proposes release time problem for modular software system considering weights of the modules and by modelling the models with two software reliability growth models (SRGMs). The effect of testing coverage function and fault reduction factor is taken into account in these SRGMs. For determine the modular weights Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) is used. FAHP decomposes complex structure of software into different levels of hierarchy and helps in determining the relative weights of the modules. The two SRGMs are considered separately to formulate the multi-objective optimization problem by considering development cost and software reliability simultaneously. Release time problem is followed by sensitivity analysis with the purpose of understanding the importance of development cost on release time. A numerical illustration is provided to understand the proposed methodology. For the estimation of the parameters given in SRGMs; a real life fault dataset has been used.KeywordsSoftware reliabilitySoftware reliability growth modelFuzzy analytical hierarchy processTesting coverageFault reduction factorMulti-objective optimization problemRelease time problem