Software Systems Reliability: A Raytheon Project History.

Abstract : This report presents results of a project to collect software data from the records of development of large Department of Defense ground-based system. A description of the subject systems software development process, characteristics, tools, and test methods are presented. Qualitative and quantitative data gathered from configuration management files are included as well as statistical summaries of this data. A detailed description of the data base files is included as well as portions of the actual data base. Recommendations are made for the use of the data as well for the future collection of such data. The data consists of three files, viz: (1) Module Description File (109 entries); (2) Software Problem Report File (2165 entries); and (3) Error Category File (193 entries). Each problem report was assigned an error category from the fault taxonomy and the data was cross correlated and summarized. The most frequent problems were in the categories of: (a) User Requested Changes (35%), (b) Data Handling (19%), and (c) Logic (18%).