Tutorial 1:

 

Developing More Reliable Software Faster & Cheaper

Speaker: John Musa

 

[ About the Speaker ]  [ Abstract ]  [ Outline

 

 

About the Speaker: 

John D. Musa is an independent consultant.  He was recently Technical Manager of Software Reliability Engineering (SRE) at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ.  He has varied and extensive experience as a software developer and software development manager. 

Musa is one of the creators of the field of software reliability engineering (SRE).  Principal author of the highly-acclaimed pioneering book “Software Reliability:  Measurement, Prediction, Application” (McGraw-Hill), he has published some 100 papers. His new book “Software Reliability Engineering: More Reliable Software, Faster Development and Testing (McGraw-Hill) focuses on practice.  The IEEE elected him Fellow in 1986 for his many seminal contributions. He was recognized in 1992 as the person who had contributed the most to testing technology.  His leadership has been noted by every recent edition of Who’s Who in America and American Men and Women of Science.

Musa is widely recognized as the leader in the practical application of SRE.  He initiated and spearheaded SRE practice at AT&T, resulting in its selection as a “Best Current Practice” and leading the team that codified that practice.  He was involved in developing most of the details. His many contributions include the concept of execution time (used almost universally in the field today), the distinction between failures and faults, the operational profile and all its related technology, the ideas of operational development, Reduced Operation Software (ROS), the fault exposure ratio and software reliability prediction, and the integration of software reliability engineering into all phases of the software development process.

He is an experienced international speaker and teacher (over 175 major presentations) with consistently outstanding feedback. One of the founders of the IEEE Technical Committee on Software Reliability Engineering, he is closely networked with the other leaders in the field, providing a broad perspective., he is closely networked with the other leaders in the field, providing a broad perspective.

 

Abstract:

Activities of Tutorial:  The tutorial breaks down the practice of Software Reliability Engineering (SRE) into six major activities.  The procedure for each of these steps is presented step by step, with a real example given for each step.  The example is a simple, unified one; the participant thus sees how one real project is approached throughout. Participants are strongly encouraged to relate the course material to their experience and to ask questions at any time. Thus the interaction within the class and class contributions from a wide variety of projects and project environments can contribute to the participant’s experience. The continually updated course material has been perfected through interaction with thousands of  participants worldwide.

Goal of Tutorial:  This tutorial teaches you the essentials of how to apply the standard, proven, widespread best practice of Software Reliability Engineering (SRE) to your project.  This will help you develop and test more reliable software faster and cheaper.

Target Audience: software testers, quality assurance engineers, systems engineers or architects, project managers, software developers, reliability engineers

Previous Experience with Tutorial:  Similar tutorials were presented at the International Symposia on Software Reliability Engineering from 1996 through 2000 inclusive (the tutorial had either the largest or one of the largest audiences in each case), the 17th International Conference on Software Engineering, Genie Logiciel 1996 (France), Software Quality Week 1996 through 2000 inclusive, Quality Week Europe 1998, and the 15th International Conference on Testing Computer Software.  However, the tutorial is continually revised to keep up with the technology, so the current version will differ somewhat from the previous ones.  The presenter has extensive experience with related tutorials (well over 50). Participant feedback for all these tutorials has consistently been outstanding.  Some sample quotes:

“One of the best tutorials I have attended”

“Ideas I could immediately use on my job”

“Simple, clear, very easy to understand”

 

Outline:

·         SRET process

        Overview

-         Picking associated systems

·         Engineer “just right” reliability

-         Define “failure”

-         Set failure intensity objectives

-         Choose reliability strategies

·         Develop operational profiles

-         Identify initiators of operations

-         Create the operations “list”

-         Determine occurrence rates

-         Determine occurrence probabilities

·         Prepare for test

-         Choose number of test cases

-         Specify test cases

-         Prepare test procedures

·         Execute test

-         Allocate test time

-         Invoke tests

-         Identify failures

-         Establish when failures occurred

·         Apply failure data to guide decisions

-         Reliability growth test

-         Certification Test