Predicting component failures at design time

How do design decisions impact the quality of the resulting software? In an empirical study of 52 ECLIPSE plug-ins, we found that the software design as well as past failure history, can be used to build models which accurately predict failure-prone components in new programs. Our prediction only requires usage relationships between components, which are typically defined in the design phase; thus, designers can easily explore and assess design alternatives in terms of predicted quality. In the ECLIPSE study, 90% of the 5% most failure-prone components, as predicted by our model from design data, turned out to actually produce failures later; a random guess would have predicted only 33%.