Software reliability engineering process

What is software reliability engineering (SRE)? SRE is an established discipline that can help organizations improve the reliability of their products and processes. The IEEE/AIAA P1633TM/Draft 4, Draft Recommended Practice for Software Reliability Prediction [6] defines SRE as “the application of statistical techniques to data collected during system development and operation to specify, predict, estimate, and assess the reliability of software-based systems.” SRE is comprised of models and tools and describes the what and how of software reliability engineering. It is important for an organization to have a disciplined process if it is to produce highreliability software. The process includes a life-cycle approach to SRE that takes into account all aspects of a quantitative approach to achieving high-quality software in an organization. The tutorial uses a case-study approach geared to analytical methods and processes that have proven successful for mission-critical applications [8]. The following topics are covered in the tutorial: consumer and producer risk analysis (control charts and acceptance sampling plans), defect analysis, metric analysis, reliability analysis, fault-tree analysis, and reliability model parameter screening.