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Article
Publication date: 25 November 2021

Saurabh Panwar, Vivek Kumar, P.K. Kapur and Ompal Singh

Software testing is needed to produce extremely reliable software products. A crucial decision problem that the software developer encounters is to ascertain when to terminate the…

245

Abstract

Purpose

Software testing is needed to produce extremely reliable software products. A crucial decision problem that the software developer encounters is to ascertain when to terminate the testing process and when to release the software system in the market. With the growing need to deliver quality software, the critical assessment of reliability, cost of testing and release time strategy is requisite for project managers. This study seeks to examine the reliability of the software system by proposing a generalized testing coverage-based software reliability growth model (SRGM) that incorporates the effect of testing efforts and change point. Moreover, the strategic software time-to-market policy based on costreliability criteria is suggested.

Design/methodology/approach

The fault detection process is modeled as a composite function of testing coverage, testing efforts and the continuation time of the testing process. Also, to assimilate factual scenarios, the current research exhibits the influence of software users refer as reporters in the fault detection process. Thus, this study models the reliability growth phenomenon by integrating the number of reporters and the number of instructions executed in the field environment. Besides, it is presumed that the managers release the software early to capture maximum market share and continue the testing process for an added period in the user environment. The multiattribute utility theory (MAUT) is applied to solve the optimization model with release time and testing termination time as two decision variables.

Findings

The practical applicability and performance of the proposed methodology are demonstrated through real-life software failure data. The findings of the empirical analysis have shown the superiority of the present study as compared to conventional approaches.

Originality/value

This study is the first attempt to assimilate testing coverage phenomenon in joint optimization of software time to market and testing duration.

Details

International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, vol. 39 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0265-671X

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Article
Publication date: 30 October 2019

Vibha Verma, Sameer Anand and Anu Gupta Aggarwal

The purpose of this paper is to identify and quantify the key components of the overall cost of software development when warranty coverage is given by a developer. Also, the…

261

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify and quantify the key components of the overall cost of software development when warranty coverage is given by a developer. Also, the authors have studied the impact of imperfect debugging on the optimal release time, warranty policy and development cost which signifies that it is important for the developers to control the parameters that cause a sharp increase in cost.

Design/methodology/approach

An optimization problem is formulated to minimize software development cost by considering imperfect fault removal process, faults generation at a constant rate and an environmental factor to differentiate the operational phase from the testing phase. Another optimization problem under perfect debugging conditions, i.e. without error generation is constructed for comparison. These optimization models are solved in MATLAB, and their solutions provide insights to the degree of impact of imperfect debugging on the optimal policies with respect to software release time and warranty time.

Findings

A real-life fault data set of Radar System is used to study the impact of various cost factors via sensitivity analysis on release and warranty policy. If firms tend to provide warranty for a longer period of time, then they may have to bear losses due to increased debugging cost with more number of failures occurring during the warrantied time but if the warranty is not provided for sufficient time it may not act as sufficient hedge during field failures.

Originality/value

Every firm is fighting to remain in the competition and expand market share by offering the latest technology-based products, using innovative marketing strategies. Warranty is one such strategic tool to promote the product among masses and develop a sense of quality in the user’s mind. In this paper, the failures encountered during development and after software release are considered to model the failure process.

Details

International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, vol. 37 no. 9/10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0265-671X

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Article
Publication date: 26 June 2019

P.K. Kapur, Saurabh Panwar and Ompal Singh

This paper aims to develop a parsimonious and innovative model that captures the dynamics of new product diffusion in the recent high-technology markets and thus assist both…

315

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to develop a parsimonious and innovative model that captures the dynamics of new product diffusion in the recent high-technology markets and thus assist both academicians and practitioners who are eager to understand the diffusion phenomena. Accordingly, this study develops a novel diffusion model to forecast the demand by centering on the dynamic state of the product’s adoption rate. The proposed study also integrates the consumer’s psychological point of view on price change and goodwill of the innovation in the diffusion process.

Design/methodology/approach

In this study, a two-dimensional distribution function has been derived using Cobb–Douglas’s production function to combine the effect of price change and continuation time (goodwill) of the technology in the market. Focused on the realistic scenario of sales growth, the model also assimilates the time-to-time variation in the adoption rate (hazard rate) of the innovation owing to companies changing marketing and pricing strategies. The time-instance upon which the adoption rate alters is termed as change-point.

Findings

For validation purpose, the developed model is fitted on the actual sales and price data set of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) semiconductors, liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors and room air-conditioners using non-linear least squares estimation procedure. The results indicate that the proposed model has better forecasting efficiency than the conventional diffusion models.

Research limitations/implications

The developed model is intrinsically restricted to a single generation diffusion process. However, technological innovations appear in generations. Therefore, this study also yields additional plausible directions for future analysis by extending the diffusion process in a multi-generational environment.

Practical implications

This study aims to assist marketing managers in determining the long-term performance of the technology innovation and examine the influence of fluctuating price on product demand. Besides, it also incorporates the dynamic tendency of adoption rate in modeling the diffusion process of technological innovations. This will support the managers in understanding the practical implications of different marketing and promotional strategies on the adoption rate.

Originality/value

This is the first attempt to study the value-based diffusion model that includes key interactions between goodwill of the innovation, price dynamics and change-point for anticipating the sales behavior of technological products.

Details

Journal of Modelling in Management, vol. 14 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-5664

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Article
Publication date: 25 November 2019

Avinash Kumar Shrivastava and Nitin Sachdeva

Almost everything around us is the output of software-driven machines or working with software. Software firms are working hard to meet the user’s requirements. But developing a…

258

Abstract

Purpose

Almost everything around us is the output of software-driven machines or working with software. Software firms are working hard to meet the user’s requirements. But developing a fault-free software is not possible. Also due to market competition, firms do not want to delay their software release. But early release software comes with the problem of user reporting more failures during operations due to more number of faults lying in it. To overcome the above situation, software firms these days are releasing software with an adequate amount of testing instead of delaying the release to develop reliable software and releasing software patches post release to make the software more reliable. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors have developed a generalized framework by assuming that testing continues beyond software release to determine the time to release and stop testing of software. As the testing team is always not skilled, hence, the rate of detection correction of faults during testing may change over time. Also, they may commit an error during software development, hence increasing the number of faults. Therefore, the authors have to consider these two factors as well in our proposed model. Further, the authors have done sensitivity analysis based on the cost-modeling parameters to check and analyze their impact on the software testing and release policy.

Findings

From the proposed model, the authors found that it is better to release early and continue testing in the post-release phase. By using this model, firms can get the benefits of early release, and at the same time, users get the benefit of post-release software reliability assurance.

Originality/value

The authors are proposing a generalized model for software scheduling.

Details

International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, vol. 37 no. 6/7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0265-671X

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Article
Publication date: 27 July 2021

Avinash Kumar Shrivastava and Ruchi Sharma

The purpose of this paper is to develop a new software reliability growth model considering different fault distribution function before and after the change point.

255

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop a new software reliability growth model considering different fault distribution function before and after the change point.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, the authors have developed a framework to incorporate change-point in developing a hybrid software reliability growth model by considering different distribution functions before and after the change point.

Findings

Numerical illustration suggests that the proposed model gives better results in comparison to the existing models.

Originality/value

The existing literature on change point-based software reliability growth model assumes that the fault correction trend before and after the change is governed by the same distribution. This seems impractical as after the change in the testing environment, the trend of fault detection or correction may not follow the same trend; hence, the assumption of same distribution function may fail to predict the potential number of faults. The modelling framework assumes different distributions before and after change point in developing a software reliability growth model.

Details

International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, vol. 39 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0265-671X

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Article
Publication date: 3 April 2018

Remica Aggarwal, Surya Prakash Singh and P.K. Kapur

In this paper, vendor selection and order allocation problem is considered for a buyer dealing in multiple products to be supplied by multiple vendors. Each product has an…

364

Abstract

Purpose

In this paper, vendor selection and order allocation problem is considered for a buyer dealing in multiple products to be supplied by multiple vendors. Each product has an associated lead time with stochastic demand having stochastic capacity for each vendor across entire time period. Uncertainties related to costs which are further influenced by the periodically changing incremental quantity discounts offered by various vendors. The purpose of this paper is to find an optimal trade-off of vendor selection and order allocation in the presence of uncertainties involving multiple conflicting objectives such as cost minimization, service level/quality level maximization and delivery lead time minimization concurrently.

Design/methodology/approach

Vendor selection problem considered here has a multi-objective optimization design subject to a set of demand, capacity and quantity discount based constraints. These constraints as well as uncertainty related to lead time have been handled using chance constraint approach. The problem is titled as “integrated dynamic vendor selection problem (IDVSP).” The proposed multi-objective IDVSP is solved using both non-pre-emptive goal programming (GP) and weighted sum aggregate objective function (AOF) technique.

Findings

Findings indicate goal achievement for different objectives from both non-pre-emptive GP and AOF procedure. While the goals are satisfactorily achieved as per the target values for cost and lead time, quality/service level was somewhat compromised in order to find an appropriate trade off.

Originality/value

The research work is original as it integrates dynamic as well as stochastic (uncertain) nature of supply chain simultaneously coupled with the concept of incremental quantity discounts on lot sizes.

Details

Benchmarking: An International Journal, vol. 25 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-5771

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Article
Publication date: 2 November 2021

Rama Rao Narvaneni and K. Suresh Babu

Software reliability growth models (SRGMs) are used to assess and predict reliability of a software system. Many of these models are effective in predicting future failures unless…

103

Abstract

Purpose

Software reliability growth models (SRGMs) are used to assess and predict reliability of a software system. Many of these models are effective in predicting future failures unless the software evolves.

Design/methodology/approach

This objective of this paper is to identify the best path for rectifying the BFT (bug fixing time) and BFR (bug fixing rate). Moreover, the flexible software project has been examined while materializing the BFR. To enhance the BFR, the traceability of bug is lessened by the version tag virtue in every software deliverable component. The release time of software build is optimized with the utilization of mathematical optimization mechanisms like ‘software reliability growth’ and ‘non-homogeneous Poisson process methods.’

Findings

In current market scenario, this is most essential. The automation and variation of build is also resolved in this contribution. Here, the software, which is developed, is free from the bugs or defects and enhances the quality of software by increasing the BFR.

Originality/value

In current market scenario, this is most essential. The automation and variation of build is also resolved in this contribution. Here, the software, which is developed, is free from the bugs or defects and enhances the quality of software by increasing the BFR.

Details

International Journal of Intelligent Unmanned Systems, vol. 10 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2049-6427

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Article
Publication date: 25 January 2008

Nesar Ahmad, M.U. Bokhari, S.M.K. Quadri and M.G.M. Khan

The purpose of this research is to incorporate the exponentiated Weibull testing‐effort functions into software reliability modeling and to estimate the optimal software release…

930

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this research is to incorporate the exponentiated Weibull testing‐effort functions into software reliability modeling and to estimate the optimal software release time.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper suggests a software reliability growth model based on the non‐homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP) which incorporates the exponentiated Weibull (EW) testing‐efforts.

Findings

Experimental results on actual data from three software projects are compared with other existing models which reveal that the proposed software reliability growth model with EW testing‐effort is wider and effective SRGM.

Research limitations/implications

This paper presents a SRGM using a constant error detection rate per unit testing‐effort.

Practical implications

Software reliability growth model is one of the fundamental techniques to assess software reliability quantitatively. The results obtained in this paper will be useful during the software testing process.

Originality/value

The present scheme has a flexible structure and may cover many of the earlier results on software reliability growth modeling. In general, this paper also provides a framework in which many software reliability growth models can be described.

Details

International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, vol. 25 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0265-671X

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Article
Publication date: 11 June 2019

Nitin Sachdeva, Avinash K. Shrivastava and Ankur Chauhan

The problem of evaluating potential suppliers has always been based on finding an optimal tradeoff between supplier’s performance consistently meeting firms’ needs and acceptable…

1084

Abstract

Purpose

The problem of evaluating potential suppliers has always been based on finding an optimal tradeoff between supplier’s performance consistently meeting firms’ needs and acceptable cost. The purpose of this paper is to propose a hybrid multi-criteria decision framework to quantify this qualitative judgment and reduce ambiguity in selection of suppliers in the era of Industry 4.0.

Design/methodology/approach

A hybrid intuitionistic fuzzy entropy weight-based multi-criteria decision model with TOPSIS is proposed. The authors make use of the intuitionistic fuzzy weighted approach operator for aggregating individual decision maker’s opinions regarding each alternative over every criterion. Additionally, the authors employ the concept of Shannon’s entropy to calculate the criteria weights.

Findings

Results obtained on the basis of the proposed hybrid methodology are analyzed against two more cases wherein the authors try to showcase the relevance of using IFS and entropy-based decision framework and find out the uniqueness of the proposed framework in supplier selection process.

Practical implications

The proposed model is apposite to solve management problem of supplier selection in two ways: aggregating individual decision maker’s opinion for each of the predefined criteria along with individual decision maker’s importance and ranking the suppliers based on both positive and negative ideal solutions using TOPSIS.

Originality/value

A robust framework incorporates not only suppliers’ performance but also provides weightage to key decision makers. Especially in the context of MCDMs wherein both qualitative and quantitative data is evaluated simultaneously, the proposed framework is unique in its practical implementation of reducing ambiguity in the supplier selection process.

Details

Benchmarking: An International Journal, vol. 28 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-5771

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Article
Publication date: 13 March 2009

N. Ahmad, M.G.M. Khan, S.M.K. Quadri and M. Kumar

The purpose of this research paper is to discuss a software reliability growth model (SRGM) based on the non‐homogeneous Poisson process which incorporates the Burr type X…

439

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this research paper is to discuss a software reliability growth model (SRGM) based on the non‐homogeneous Poisson process which incorporates the Burr type X testing‐effort function (TEF), and to determine the optimal release‐time based on cost‐reliability criteria.

Design/methodology/approach

It is shown that the Burr type X TEF can be expressed as a software development/testing‐effort consumption curve. Weighted least squares estimation method is proposed to estimate the TEF parameters. The SRGM parameters are estimated by the maximum likelihood estimation method. The standard errors and confidence intervals of SRGM parameters are also obtained. Furthermore, the optimal release‐time determination based on cost‐reliability criteria has been discussed within the framework.

Findings

The performance of the proposed SRGM is demonstrated by using actual data sets from three software projects. Results are compared with other traditional SRGMs to show that the proposed model has a fairly better prediction capability and that the Burr type X TEF is suitable for incorporating into software reliability modelling. Results also reveal that the SRGM with Burr type X TEF can estimate the number of initial faults better than that of other traditional SRGMs.

Research limitations/implications

The paper presents the estimation method with equal weight. Future research may include extending the present study to unequal weight.

Practical implications

The new SRGM may be useful in detecting more faults that are difficult to find during regular testing, and in assisting software engineers to improve their software development process.

Originality/value

The incorporated TEF is flexible and can be used to describe the actual expenditure patterns more faithfully during software development.

Details

Journal of Modelling in Management, vol. 4 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-5664

Keywords

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