Improving defect removal effectiveness for software development

The paper first reviews the industry statistics on defects, presents a model of defect removal, then develops the relationships between the defect removal effectiveness of different defect removal phases. The defect removal effectiveness of an average organization is determined based on published data. Combining the industry data with the defect removal model, insights into improvement of the defect removal process can be gained. It is determined that the defect removal effectiveness of individual phases cannot be higher than that of the overall development process. Also, introducing inspection to the software development process will certainly allow an average organization to achieve higher defect removal effectiveness.