Skip to main content

Balancing Time-to-Market and Quality in Evolving Embedded Systems

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Views on Evolvability of Embedded Systems

Part of the book series: Embedded Systems ((EMSY))

  • 646 Accesses

Abstract

Finding a balance between the time-to-market and quality of a delivered product is a daunting task. The optimal release moment is not easily found. In this chapter, we show how to utilise historical project data to monitor the progress of running projects. In particular, from the data we inferred a formula providing a rough indication of the number of defects given the effort spent thus far. Furthermore, we have investigated at a common distribution used to predict the distribution of the number of change requests over the lifetime of a project, the Rayleigh model, and whether this model is useful at Philips Healthcare to monitor the progress of a project and help decide when the product reaches a predetermined level of quality.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    The Functional Clusters form a high-level decomposition of the software archive, similar to more well-known concepts such as subsystems.

  2. 2.

    In reality, critical and major defects must all be resolved before Philips Healthcare MRI releases a new version of its software.

References

  • Basili VR, Shull F, Lanubile F (1999) Building knowledge through families of experiments. IEEE Trans Software Eng 25(4):456–473

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bindewald G (2004) Transforming the grid to revolutionize electric power in North America. Available via: http://www.electricdistribution.ctc.com/pdfs/myrd_bindewald.pdf, October 2004

  • Bishop PG (2005) SILs and software. UK Safety Critical Systems Club – Newsletter. http://www.safety-club.org.uk/newsletter_14_2_c.htm?pid=%77&m1=All&m2=&sort=p1a

  • Carty SS (2010) Ford sales leap 43 percent; GM up 12 percent as Toyota loses ground. USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2010-03-02-auto-sales-feb_N.html

  • D’Ambros M, Gall H, Lanza M, Pinzger M (2008) Analyzing software repositories to understand software evolution, Chap. 3, pp 37–67. In: Mens T, Demeyer S (eds) Software Evolution, Springer

    Google Scholar 

  • Fenton NE, Ohlsson N (2000) Quantitative analysis of faults and failures in a complex software system. IEEE Trans Software Eng 26(8):797–814

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fenton NE, Neil M, Marsh W, Hearty P, Marquez D, Krause P, Mishra R (2007) Predicting software defects in varying development lifecycles using Bayesian nets. Inform Software Tech 49(1):32–43

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gibbs WW (1994) Software’s chronic crisis. Sci Am pp 71–81

    Google Scholar 

  • Girba T, Kuhn A, Seeberger M, Ducasse S (2005) How developers drive software evolution. In: Proceedings of International workshop on principles of software evolution (IWPSE’05). IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, pp 113–122

    Google Scholar 

  • Krikhaar R, Mosterman W, Veerman N, Verhoef C (2009) Enabling system evolution through configuration management on the hardware-software boundary. Syst Eng 12(3):233–264

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leveson NG, Turner CS (1993) An investigation of the Therac-25 accidents. Computer 26(7):18–41

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McConnell S (1997) Gauging software readiness with defect tracking. IEEE Software 14(3):136

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nagappan N, Ball T, Murphy B (2006) Using historical in-process and product metrics for early estimation of software failures. In: Proceedings of ISSRE’06. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, pp 62–74

    Google Scholar 

  • Philips Healthcare (2009) Philips FR2+ corrective action. http://www.healthcare.philips.com/us/products/resuscitation/p%roducts/fr2plus/action.wpd

    Google Scholar 

  • Poulsen K (2004) Tracking the blackout bug. SecurityFocus. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/8412

  • Putnam LH, Myers W (1991) Measures for excellence: Reliable software on time, within budget. Prentice Hall

    Google Scholar 

  • R Development Core Team (2008) R: A programming environment for data analysis and graphics. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria

    Google Scholar 

  • Spek Pvd, Verhoef C (2010) Balancing time-to-market and quality in embedded systems (submitted) http://www.cs.vu.nl/~x/mri/mri.pdf

  • Staron M, Meding W (2008) Predicting weekly defect inflow in large software projects based on project planning and test status. Inform Software Tech 50(7-8):782–796

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (1997) Design control guidance for medical device manufacturers. http://www.fda.gov/

  • Verhoef C (2007) Software as strong as a dyke. Tech. rep., VU University Amsterdam. http://www.cs.vu.nl/~x/sil/sil.pdf

  • Zimmermann T, Nagappan N, Gall H, Giger E, Murphy B (2009) Cross-project defect prediction: a large scale experiment on data vs. domain vs. process. In: Proceedings of ESEC/FSE’09, ACM, New York, pp 91–100

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pieter van der Spek .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

van der Spek, P., Verhoef, C. (2010). Balancing Time-to-Market and Quality in Evolving Embedded Systems. In: Van de Laar, P., Punter, T. (eds) Views on Evolvability of Embedded Systems. Embedded Systems. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9849-8_16

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9849-8_16

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-9848-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-90-481-9849-8

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics