Reliability Assessment of Software System Using IFS and OWA-Tree Analysis

Abstract

To address the software design and development, reliability assessment is considered as crucial and most important task. Several studies have been directed towards reliability assessment approaches for obtaining highly reliable software product. In conventional reliability theory, failure probability of any component is assumed as an exact value but in actuality it’s not possible to get failure probability precisely. In this study, we have proposed an approach to assess the reliability of a software system with vague failure rate of the components as the given information might be incomplete or uncertain. It is a bottom–top methodology which includes the combination of intuitionistic fuzzy set (IFS) theory and ordered weighted averaging (OWA) tree analysis. Using IFS, we are able to come over the vagueness in the failure rate data and by using OWA-tree, we incorporate the subjectivity in the opinion of software developers with respect to selection of module. Further, for the illustration of the proposed approach one numerical example has been discussed and software reliability is assessed based upon different orness level.