OPTIMAL TESTING RESOURCE ALLOCATION FOR MODULAR SOFTWARE CONSIDERING COST, TESTING EFFORT AND RELIABILITY USING GENETIC ALGORITHM

The demand for complex and large-scale software systems is increasing rapidly. Therefore, the development of high-quality, reliable and low cost computer software has become critical issue in the enormous worldwide computer technology market. For developing these large and complex software small and independent modules are integrated which are tested independently during module testing phase of software development. In the process, testing resources such as time, testing personnel etc. are used. These resources are not infinitely large. Consequently, it is an important matter for the project manager to allocate these limited resources among the modules optimally during the testing process. Another major concern in software development is the cost. It is in fact, profit to the management if the cost of the software is less while meeting the costumer requirements. In this paper, we investigate an optimal resource allocation problem of minimizing the cost of software testing under limited amount of available resources, given a reliability constraint. To solve the optimization problem we present genetic algorithm which stands up as a powerful tool for solving search and optimization problems. The key objective of using genetic algorithm in the field of software reliability is its capability to give optimal results through learning from historical data. One numerical example has been discussed to illustrate the applicability of the approach.