Software errors and complexity: an empirical investigation0

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Software errors and complexity: an empirical investigation0

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Communications of the ACM archive
Volume 27 , Issue 1 (January 1984) table of contents

Pages: 42 - 52

Year of Publication: 1984

ISSN:0001-0782

Authors

Victor R. Basili	Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD
Barry T. Perricone	Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD

Publisher

ACM New York, NY, USA

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Downloads (6 Weeks): 21, Downloads (12 Months): 211, Citation Count: 94

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abstract references cited by index terms review collaborative colleagues

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ABSTRACT

An analysis of the distributions and relationships derived from the change data collected during development of a medium-scale software project produces some surprising insights into the factors influencing software development. Among these are the tradeoffs between modifying an existing module as opposed to creating a new one, and the relationship between module size and error proneness.

REFERENCES

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

	1	Basili, V., and Freburger, K. Programming measurement and estimation in the Software Engineering Laboratory. The Journal of Systems and Software 2, 1 (Mar. 1981), 47-57.
	2	Basili, V., and Weiss, D. A methodology for collecting valid software engineering data. University of Maryland Tech. Rep. TR-1235, Dec. 1982.
	3	Basili, V., and Weiss, D. Evaluating software development by analysis of changes: The data from the Software Engineering Laboratory. University of Maryland Tech. Rep, TR-1236, Dec. 1982.
	4	Belady, L. A., and Lehman, M. M. A model of large program development. IBM Systems Journal 15, 3 (1976), 225-251.
	5	Albert Endres, An analysis of errors and their causes in system programs, Proceedings of the international conference on Reliable software, p.327-336, April 21-23, 1975, Los Angeles, California
	6	McCabe, T. J. A complexity measure. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering SE-2, 4 (Dec. 1976), 308-320.
	7	Mendenhall, W., and Ramey, M. Statistics for Psychology. Duxbury Press, North Scituate, Mass., 1973, pp. 280-315.
	8	Schneidewind, N. F. An experiment in software error data collection and analysis. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering SE-5, 3 (May 1979), 276-286.
	9	Weiss. D. M. Evaluating software development by error analysis: The data from the architecture research facility. The Journal of Systems and Software 1, 1 (Mar. 1979), 57-70.

CITED BY 94

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	William R. Bitman, Functional lists: object-oriented design classes for MIS applications, Proceedings of the seventh Washington Ada symposium on Ada, p.101-122, July 1990, McLean, Virginia, United States
	Marcello Visconti , Curtis Cook, Software system documentation process maturity model, Proceedings of the 1993 ACM conference on Computer science, p.352-357, February 16-18, 1993, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States
	Ji Y. Lee , Hye J. Kim , Kyo C. Kang, A real world object modeling method for creating simulation environment of real-time systems, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.35 n.10, p.93-104, Oct. 2000
	David A. Workman , Richard Crutchfield, Quality guidelines = designer metrics, Proceedings of the conference on TRI-Ada '94, p.29-40, November 06-11, 1994, Baltimore, Maryland, United States
	Khaled El Emam , Saïda Benlarbi , Nishith Goel , Walcelio Melo , Hakim Lounis , Shesh N. Rai, The Optimal Class Size for Object-Oriented Software, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.28 n.5, p.494-509, May 2002
	Ram Chillarege , Wei-Lun Kao , Richard G. Condit, Defect type and its impact on the growth curve, Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Software engineering, p.246-255, May 13-17, 1991, Austin, Texas, United States
	Carol Withrow, Error Density and Size in Ada Software, IEEE Software, v.7 n.1, p.26-30, January 1990
	V. R. Basili , H. D. Rombach, Tailoring the software process to project goals and environments, Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Software Engineering, p.345-357, March 1987, Monterey, California, United States
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	William R. Bitman, Information systems modeling: an object oriented development method, Proceedings of the ninth Washington Ada symposium on Ada: Empowering software users and developers, p.93-105, July 1992, McLean, Virginia, United States
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	Victor R. Basili , Steven E. Condon , Khaled El Emam , Robert B. Hendrick , Walcelio Melo, Characterizing and modeling the cost of rework in a library of reusable software components, Proceedings of the 19th international conference on Software engineering, p.282-291, May 17-23, 1997, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
	Muneo Takahashi , Yuji Kamayachi, An empirical study of a model for program error prediction, Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Software engineering, p.330-336, August 28-30, 1985, London, England
	Walter F. Tichy, Should Computer Scientists Experiment More?, Computer, v.31 n.5, p.32-40, May 1998
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	V. R. Basili, Recent advances in software measurement (abstract and references for talk), Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Software engineering, p.44-49, March 26-30, 1990, Nice, France
	Mauricio A. de Almeida , Hakim Lounis , Walcélio L. Melo, An investigation on the use of machine learned models for estimating correction costs, Proceedings of the 20th international conference on Software engineering, p.473-476, April 19-25, 1998, Kyoto, Japan
	David N. Card , Gerald T. Page , Frank E. McGarry, Criteria for software modularization, Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Software engineering, p.372-377, August 28-30, 1985, London, England
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	Inhwan Lee , Ravishankar K. Iyer, Diagnosing Rediscovered Software Problems Using Symptoms, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.26 n.2, p.113-127, February 2000
	Andrew S. Tanenbaum , Jorrit N. Herder , Herbert Bos, Can We Make Operating Systems Reliable and Secure?, Computer, v.39 n.5, p.44-51, May 2006
	Ranjith Purushothaman , Dewayne E. Perry, Toward Understanding the Rhetoric of Small Source Code Changes, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.31 n.6, p.511-526, June 2005
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	Thomas J. Ostrand , Elaine J. Weyuker , Robert M. Bell, Predicting the Location and Number of Faults in Large Software Systems, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.31 n.4, p.340-355, April 2005
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	T. Nakajo , I. Azuma , M. Tada, A Case History Development of a Foolproofing Interface Documentation System, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.19 n.8, p.765-773, August 1993
	Les Hatton, Reexamining the Fault Density-Component Size Connection, IEEE Software, v.14 n.2, p.89-97, March 1997
	W. E. Howden , B. Wieand, QDA - A Method for Systematic Informal Program Analysis, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.20 n.6, p.445-462, June 1994
	Richard W. Selby , Victor R. Basili, Analyzing Error-Prone System Structure, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.17 n.2, p.141-152, February 1991
	Markus Schütz, How to efficiently build VHDL testbenches, Proceedings of the conference on European design automation, p.554-559, September 18-22, 1995, Brighton, England
	John C. Munson , Allen P. Nikora , Joseph S. Sherif, Software faults: a quantifiable definition, Advances in Engineering Software, v.37 n.5, p.327-333, May 2006
	Marek Leszak , Dewayne E. Perry , Dieter Stoll, A case study in root cause defect analysis, Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on Software engineering, p.428-437, June 04-11, 2000, Limerick, Ireland
	Everald E. Mills, Metrics in the software engineering curriculum, Annals of Software Engineering, v.6 n.1-4, p.181-200, April 1999
	Takeshi Nakajo , Hitoshi Kume, A case history analysis of software error cause-effect relationships, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.17 n.8, p.830-838, August 1991
	John C. Munson , Taghi M. Khoshgoftaar, The Detection of Fault-Prone Programs, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.18 n.5, p.423-433, May 1992
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	Ramanath Subramanyam , M. S. Krishnan, Empirical Analysis of CK Metrics for Object-Oriented Design Complexity: Implications for Software Defects, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.29 n.4, p.297-310, April 2003
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	Norman E. Fenton , Niclas Ohlsson, Quantitative Analysis of Faults and Failures in a Complex Software System, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.26 n.8, p.797-814, August 2000
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	Randy K. Lind , K. Vairavan, An Experimental Investigation of Software Metrics and Their Relationship to Software Development Effort, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.15 n.5, p.649-653, May 1989
	M. S. Krishnan, Cost, quality and user satisfaction of software products: an empirical analysis, Proceedings of the 1993 conference of the Centre for Advanced Studies on Collaborative research: software engineering, October 24-28, 1993, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
D. Software
D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Additional Classification:
D. Software
D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
D.2.8 Metrics
Subjects: Complexity measures

K. Computing Milieux
K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
K.6.3 Software Management
Subjects: Software development

General Terms:
Measurement, Performance, Reliability, Verification

REVIEW

"David M. Weiss : Reviewer"

Although there have been many proposals for improving it, the software development processs is still poorly understood. One reason is that there is little objective data that can be used as the basis for accepting or rejecting explanations. Th more...

Collaborative Colleagues:

Victor R. Basili: colleagues

Barry T. Perricone: colleagues

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