Tracking quality: from verification to customer [ESS case study]

To deliver a high-quality product to the customer, it is important to minimize software failures before delivery. A model is used to measure the failures per unit time during software testing in a large development project. A low failure rate indicates good quality. Emphasis is placed on customer-affecting failures. In the next step, the same model is applied to data from the site. With its emphasis on counting customer-affecting failures, the metric reveals any degradation in service to the customer. Measurements from the site help check the accuracy of the measurements during the testing phase and also provide a feedback mechanism to fine-tune the process for testing of future loads. In the present work, reference is made to a particular AT&T electronic switch project involving a large amount of software