Software Reliability Growth Model Considering First-Step and Second-Step Fault Dependency

As one of the most important indexes to evaluate the quality of software, software reliability experiences an increasing development in recent years. We investigate a software reliability growth model(SRGM). The application of this model is to predict the occurrence of the software faults based on the non-homogeneous Poisson process(NHPP). Unlike the independent assumptions in other models, we consider fault dependency. The testing faults are divided into three classes in this model: leading faults, first-step dependent faults and second-step dependent faults. The leading faults occurring independently follow an NHPP, while the first-step dependent faults only become detectable after the related leading faults are detected. The second-step dependent faults can only be detected after the related first-step dependent faults are detected. Then, the combined model is built on the basis of the three sub-processes. Finally, an illustration based on real dataset is presented to verify the proposed model.