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Release time determination depending on number of test runs using multi attribute utility theory

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Abstract

To achieve competitive success in software industry, technological innovation is very important. Due to stiff competition, the software developers are trying very hard to survive in the market by adding some new features to the existing software. A most effective way of handling software development method is to go version-by-version. This stepwise release is termed as multi-release of a software product. Due to demand of new features and highly reliable software system, the software industries are speeding their up-gradations/add-ons in the software. An important decision problem that the management encounters is to determine when to stop testing and release the software system to the user. Such a problem is known as “Software Release Time Problem”. We propose an optimization problem of determining the optimal time of software release based on goals set by the management in terms of cost, reliability and failure intensity etc. subject to the system constraints. To trade-off between two conflicting objectives cost and reliability, multi-attribute utility theory is applied in our decision model. A continuous time model has limitations in its application on many real life applications having discrete time data. Due to this reason, in this paper a discrete model is proposed to determine the software release time, using a discrete logistic function and an exact solution is obtained using probability generating function. A numerical illustration is provided towards the end of the paper.

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Acknowledgments

Authors express their deep sense of gratitude to The Founder President of Amity Universe, Dr. Ashok K. Chauhan for his keen interest in promoting research in the Amity Universe and always been an inspiration for achieving greater heights.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Amity International Business School, Amity University Uttar Pradesh, Noida, India

    P. K. Kapur

  2. Amity Institute of Information Technology, Amity University Uttar Pradesh, Noida, India

    Sunil Kumar Khatri

  3. Amity School of Engineering, Amity University Uttar Pradesh, Noida, India

    Anshul Tickoo

  4. Department of Computer Science, Najran University, Najran, Saudi Arabia

    Omar Shatnawi

Authors
  1. P. K. Kapur
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  2. Sunil Kumar Khatri
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  3. Anshul Tickoo
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  4. Omar Shatnawi
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Correspondence to P. K. Kapur.

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Kapur, P.K., Khatri, S.K., Tickoo, A. et al. Release time determination depending on number of test runs using multi attribute utility theory. Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag 5, 186–194 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-014-0230-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-014-0230-9

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