Developing Reliable Software Efficiently
John Musa

Concepts

This talk will present three proven practices that can help us develop reliable software more efficiently: implementing operational profiles, engineering “just right” reliability, and tracking reliability in test. Operational profiles are quantitative descriptions of how software will be used. Engineering “just right” reliability refers to quantitatively determining with prospective customers what tradeoff among reliability, delivery time, and cost will best meet their needs and then tuning the development process to pick the most cost effective reliability strategies to achieve that reliability level. Reliability is tracked in test to quantitatively guide when the software should be released. The talk will explain the practices, show how they work, and show how to apply them.

Objectives

• Implementing operational profiles
• Engineering “just right” reliability
• How to track reliability during testing
• Tradeoffs between reliability, delivery time, and cost
• Where to apply these concepts

Biography

John D. Musa is one of the creators of the field of software reliability engineering (SRE) and is widely recognized as the leader in reducing it to practice. He currently teaches a 2 day course More Reliable Software Faster and Cheaper worldwide to organizations who want to deploy the SRE practice. He also consults with a wide variety of clients.

He is principal author of the widely-acclaimed pioneering book Software Reliability: and author of the practically-oriented Software Reliability Engineering. Elected IEEE Fellow in 1986 for his many seminal contributions, he was recognized in 1992 as the leading contributor to testing technology. His leadership has been recognized by every edition of Who’s Who in America since 1990 and by American Men and Women of Science.