A root cause analysis method for preventing erratic behavior in software development: PEBA

Hojat Mohammadnazar, Mirja Pulkkinen and Hadi Ghanbari

Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 2019, vol. 191, issue C

Abstract: Measures taken to prevent faults from being introduced or going undetected can secure development of highly reliable software systems. One such measure is analyzing root causes of recurring faults and preventing them from appearing again. Previous methods developed for this purpose have been reactive in nature and relied heavily on fault reporting mechanisms of ogranizations. Additionally, previous efforts lack a defined mechanism for innovating corrective actions. In this study, we strive to complement the existing methods by introducing a proactive and qualitative method that does not rely on fault data. During the course of the research, in addition to an extensive literature search, an empirical field study is conducted with representatives of companies active in safety-critical and business-critical domains. Our proposed method relies on identifying mismatches between development practices and development context in order to predict erratic behaviors. Corrective actions in this method are innovated by resolving these mismatches. The use of the method is demonstrated in two safety-critical projects. Evaluation of the proposed method is done by two experts with respect to proactivity, resource-intensity, and effectiveness.

Keywords: Software reliability; Fault prevention; Fault removal; Quality assurance; Root cause analysis; Software process improvement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reensy:v:191:y:2019:i:c:s0951832018309396

DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2019.106565

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