A dynamic approach to software bug estimation

Abstract

There is an increase in the number of software projects developed in a globally distributed environment. As a consequence of such dispersion, it becomes much harder for project managers to make resource estimations with limited information. In order to assist in the process of project resource estimations as well as support management planning for such distributed software projects, we present a methodology using software bug history data to model and predict future bug occurrences. The algorithm works in a two-step analysis mode: Local and Global Analysis. Local analysis leverages the past history of bug counts for a specific month. On the other hand, global analysis considers the bug counts over time for each individual component. The bug prediction achieved by the algorithm is close to actual bug counts for individual components of Eclipse software. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008.