ON SOME RELIABILITY GROWTH-MODELS WITH SIMPLE GRAPHICAL INTERPRETATIONS

Some useful reliability growth models, which have simple graphical interpretations, are studied in this paper. The proposed models are inspired by the Duane model. For each of the models, the plot of the cumulative number of failures against the running time, when a suitable scale is used, will tend to be on a straight line if the model is valid. Otherwise the model should be rejected. The slope of the fitted line and its intercept on the vertical axis will give us the estimates of the parameters. Hence, it provides us with a simple graphical model validation and parameter estimation tool. In particular, we propose a ''first-model-validation-then-parameter-estimation'' approach which will simplify the model validation and parameter estimation problem in software reliability analysis. Numerical analysis of several sets of software failure data are also provided to enlighten the ideas.