Prediction of Faults-Slip-Through in Large Software Projects: An Empirical Evaluation
by W. Afzal, R. Torkar, R. Feldt and T. Gorschek
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BACKGROUND – A large percentage of the cost of rework can be avoided by finding more faults earlier in a software test process. Therefore, determination of which software test phases to focus improvement work on, has considerable industrial interest. OBJECTIVE AND METHOD – We evaluate a number of prediction techniques for predicting the number of faults slipping through to unit, function, integration and system test phases of a large industrial project. The objective is to quantify improvement potential in different test phases by striving towards finding the faults in the right phase.
RESULTS – The results show that a range of techniques are found to be useful in predicting the number of faults slipping through to the four test phases, however, the group of search-based techniques (genetic programming
(GP), gene expression programming (GEP), artificial immune recognition system (AIRS) and particle swarm optimization based artificial neural network (PSO-ANN)) consistently give better predictions, having a representation at all of the test phases. Human predictions are consistently better at two of the four test phases.
CONCLUSIONS – We conclude that the human predictions regarding the number of faults slipping through to various test phases can be well supported by the use of search-based techniques. A combination of human and an automated search mechanism like any of the search-based techniques has the potential to provide improved prediction results.
Bibtex
@Article{Afzal2012IJSEKE,
author = "Wasif Afzal and Richard Torkar and Robert Feldt and Tony Gorschek",
title = "Prediction of Faults-Slip-Through in Large Software Projects: An Empirical Evaluation",
year = "2013",
month = "",
journal = "Software Quality Journal",
volume = "",
issue = "",
pages = "",
publisher = "",
keywords = "Prediction, Empirical, Faults-slip-through, Search-based",
doi = "10.1007/s11219-013-9205-3",
url = "",
url = "http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~feldt/publications/afzal_2013_faults_slip_through.html",
}