Some Aspects of Reliability Growth

Reliability growth is examined with the use of a variant of the Duane model. This variant is based on stepwise growth and avoids some of the mathematical and philosophic dificulties associated with the Duane model. Monte Carlo simulation, while confirming the noisy behavior of reliability growth data, indicates that central tendencies are sufficiently strong to justify the use of Gaussian approximations for analysis of some aspects of growth. Some exact methods and some approximations for parameter estimation are presented.