Determination of the optimal software release time based on proportional hazards software reliability growth models

The software reliability models to describe the reliability growth phenomenon are formulated by any stochastic point process with state‐dependent or time‐dependent intensity function. On the other hand, to deal with the environmental data, which consists of covariates influencing times to software failure, it may be useful to apply the Cox’s proportional hazards model for assessing the software reliability. In this paper, we review the proportional hazards software reliability models and discuss the problem to determine the optimal software release time under the expected total software cost criterion. Numerical examples are devoted to examine the dependence of the covariate structure in both the software reliability prediction and the optimal software release decision.

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