Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

A quality cost reduction model for large-scale software development

  • Published:
Software Quality Journal Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Understanding quality costs is recognized as a prerequisite for decreasing the variability of the success of software development projects. This paper presents an empirical quality cost reduction (QCR) model to support the decision-making process for additional investment in the early phases of software verification. The main idea of the QCR model is to direct additional investment into software units that have some fault-slip potential in their later verification phases, with the aim of reducing costs and increasing product quality. The fault-slip potential of a software unit within a system is determined by analogy with historical projects. After a preliminary study on a sample of software units, which proves that we can lower quality costs with additional investment into particular verification activities, we examine the effectiveness of the proposed QCR model using real project data. The results show that applying the model produces a positive business case, meaning that the model lowers quality costs and increases quality, resulting in economic benefit. The potential to reduce quality costs is growing significantly with the evolution of software systems and the reuse of their software units. The proposed model is the result of a research project performed at Ericsson.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Andersson, C., & Runeson, P. (2007). A replicated quantitative analysis of fault distributions in complex software systems. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 33(5), 273–286.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Biffl, S., Aurum, A., Boehm, B., Erdogmus, H., & Grnbacher, P. (Eds.). (2006). Value-based software engineering. Heidelberg: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boehm, B. W. (1997). COCOMO II model definition manual. Technical report, University of Southern California.

  • Boehm, B. W. (1981). Software engineering economics. New York: Prentice Hall.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Breyfogle, F. W. (2003). Implementing six sigma. Hoboken: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campanella, J. (1999). Principles of quality costs. Milwaukee: ASQ Quality Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crosby, P. B. (1996). Quality is still free: Making quality certain in uncertain times. New York: McGraw-Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Damm, L.-O., Lundberg, L., & Wohlin, C. (2004). Determining the improvement potential of a software development organization through fault analysis: A method and a case study. In: T. Dingsøyr (Ed.), Software process improvement, 11th European conference, EuroSPI 2004. Vol. 3281 of lecture notes in computer science (pp. 138–149). Berlin: Springer.

  • Damm, L.-O., Lundberg, L., & Wohlin, C. (2008). A model for software rework reduction through a combination of anomaly metrics. The Journal of Systems and Software, 81(11), 1968–1982.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Deissenboeck, F., Juergens, E., Lochmann, K., & Wagner, S. (2009). Software quality models: Purposes, usage scenarios and requirements. In B. Wong (Ed.), Proceedings of the seventh ICSE conference on software quality (WOSQ’09) (pp. 9–14). Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society.

  • Deming, W. E. (1986). Out of crisis. Cambridge: MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ebenau, R. G., & Strauss, S. H. (1994). Software inspection process. Workingham: McGraw Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fagan, M. E. (1976). Design and code inspections to reduce errors in program development. IBM Systems Journal, 15(3), 575–607.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fenton, E. N., & Pfleeger, S. L. (1998). Software metrics: A rigorous and practical approach (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: PWS Pub. Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fenton, N. E., & Ohlsson, N. (2000). Quantitative analysis of faults and failures in a complex software system. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 26(8), 797–814.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Galinac Grbac, T., Car, Ž., & Huljenić, D. (2012). Quantifying value of adding inspection effort early in the development process: A case study. IET Software, 6(3), 249–259.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Galinac Grbac, T., Runeson, P., & Huljenić, D. (2013). A second replicated quantitative analysis of fault distributions in complex software systems. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 39(4), 462–476.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Galinac, T., & Car, Ž. (2007). Software verification process improvement proposal using Six Sigma. In: J. Munch & P. Abrahamsson (Eds.), PROFES ’07: Proceedings of 8th international product-focused software process improvement conference. Vol. 4589 of lecture notes in computer science (pp. 51–64). Berlin: Springer.

  • Gondra, I. (2008). Applying machine learning to software fault-proneness prediction. The Journal of Systems and Software, 81(2), 186–195.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall, T., Beecham, S., Bowes, D., Gray, D., & Counsell, S. (2012). A systematic literature review on fault prediction performance in software engineering. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 38(6), 1276–1304.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jørgensen, M., Boehm, B., & Rifkin, S. (2009). Software development effort estimation: Formal models or expert judgment? IEEE Software, 26(2), 14–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Juran, J., et al. (1999). Juran’s quality control handbook (5th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Karg, L. M., Grottke, M., & Beckhaus, A. (2011). A systematic literature review of software quality cost research. Journal of Systems and Software, 84(3), 415–427.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Khoshgoftaar, T. M., Allen, E. B., Jones, W. D., & Hudepohl, J. P. (2001). Cost-benefit analysis of software quality models. Software Quality Journal, 9, 9–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lessmann, S., Baesens, B., Mues, C., & Pietsch, S. (2008). Benchmarking classification models for software defect prediction: A proposed framework and novel findings. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 34(4), 485–496.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Musa, J. D., Iannino, A., & Okumoto, K. (1987). Software reliability measurement, prediction, application. New York: McGraw-Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Provost, F. (2000). Machine learning from imbalanced data sets 101. In Proceedings of learning from imbalanced data sets: Papers from the American Association for Artificial Intelligence workshop, Technical report WS-00-05.

  • Putnam, L. H. (1978). A general empirical solution to the macro software sizing and estimating problem. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 4(4), 345–361.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Siy, H., & Votta, L. (2001). Does the modern code inspection have value? In Proceedings of the 17th IEEE international conference on software maintenance ICSM 2001 (pp. 281–291). Los Alamitos: IEEE Computer Society.

  • Slaughter, S. A., Harter, D. E., & Krishnan, M. S. (1998). Evaluating the cost of software quality. Communications of the ACM, 41(8), 67–73.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tosun, A., Turhan, B., & Bener., A. (2009). Validation of network measures as indicators of defective modules in software systems, In Proceedings of the 5th international conference on predictor models in software engineering (PROMISE ’09). New York, NY: ACM, Article 5.

  • Villalba, M. T., Sanz, L. F., & Martinez, J. J. (2010). Empirical support for the generation of domain-oriented quality models. IET Software, 4(1), 1–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Westland, J. C. (2004). The cost behavior of software defects. Decision Support Systems, 37(2), 229–238.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zimmermann, T., Nagappan, N., Gall, H., Giger, E., & Murphy, B. (2009). Cross-project defect prediction: A large scale experiment on data vs. domain vs. process. In Proceedings of the ESEC/FSE ’09 (pp. 91–100). New York, NY: ACM.

  • Zimmermann, T., & Nagappan, N. (2008). Predicting defects using network analysis on dependency graphs. ICSE, 2008, 531–540.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The first author is partially supported by the University of Rijeka research grant 13.09.2.2.16.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Engineering, University of Rijeka, Vukovarska 58, 51000, Rijeka, Croatia

    Tihana Galinac Grbac

  2. Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, Unska 3, 10000, Zagreb, Croatia

    Željka Car

  3. Ericsson Nikola Tesla, Krapinska 45, 10000, Zagreb, Croatia

    Darko Huljenić

Authors
  1. Tihana Galinac Grbac
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Željka Car
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Darko Huljenić
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tihana Galinac Grbac.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Galinac Grbac, T., Car, Ž. & Huljenić, D. A quality cost reduction model for large-scale software development. Software Qual J 23, 363–390 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-014-9240-8

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-014-9240-8

Keywords