An Empirical Stopping Rule for Debugging and Testing Computer Software

In this paper the authors introduce the problem of computer software reliability and discuss a probabilistic model for describing the failure of software. The authors suggest a procedure for estimating the parameters of the model, and propose a stopping rule for debugging the software. The authors also obtain an expression for additional testing of the software by considering the cost of testing, the cost of the failure of the software during its intended operation, and the power of the testing procedure.