Assessment of software reliability and the efficiency of corrective actions during the software development process

For any large software development effort, it is neither practical nor cost-effective to conduct reliability growth testing with the entire system in a fully configured state. The development process and the test steps (integration, validation and verification) in the life cycle of a product can be illustrated by theVmodel (IEC 61508 & VDI 2206). German automotive industry showed a growing interest for reliability prediction methods over all project phases with emphasis on the system and domain design.