The distribution of faults in a large industrial software system

Abstract

A case study is presented using thirteen releases of a large industrial inventory tracking system. Several types of questions are addressed in this study. The first involved examining how faults are distributed over the different files. This included making a distinction between the release during which they were discovered, the lifecycle stage at which they were first detected, and the severity of the fault. The second category of questions we considered involved studying how the size of modules affected their fault density. This included looking at questions like whether or not files with high fault densities at early stages of the lifecycle also had high fault densities during later stages. A third type of question we considered was whether files that contained large numbers of faults during early stages of development, also had large numbers of faults during later stages, and whether faultiness persisted from release to release. Finally, we examined whether newly written files were more fault-prone than ones that were written for earlier releases of the product. The ultimate goal of this study is to help identify characteristics of files that can be used as predictors of fault-proneness, thereby helping organizations determine how best to use their testing resources.