Software Reliability Modeling with Impact of Beta Testing on Release Decision

Increased dependence of humans on technologies has made it necessary for developing the software with high reliability and quality. This has led to an increased interest of firms toward the development of software with high level of efficiency; which can be achieved by incorporating beta tests for improving and ensuring that the software is safe and completely free from errors. In a software release life cycle, beta testing is the last important step that software developers carry out before they launch new software. Beta testing is a unique testing process that helps software developers to test a software product in different environments before its final release in the market. In this chapter of the book, we develop a SRGM by inculcating the concept of beta testing in the fault removal process to account for situations that might occur when the software is used in diverse environments. This is done to evade the chances of system being failed in the field. Conducting beta tests results in enhancement of software reliability and has been widely acknowledged. Furthermore, we have developed an optimal scheduling model and showed the importance of beta test while determining the general availability time of the software and making the system more cost effective. For validating the accuracy and predictive capability of the proposed model, we analyzed it on real software data set.