Key Points

• Software Reliability Engineering (SRE) helps you develop more reliable software faster and cheaper.
• SRE is a standard, proven, widespread best practice.
• This tutorial quickly, efficiently teaches you the practical basics of how to apply SRE to your project.

Presentation Abstract

SRE is based on two powerful ideas:

• Determine how often your customers will use the various functions of your product; then focus your resources in proportion to use and criticality. This approach greatly increases your development efficiency and hence your effective resource pool for adding customer value to your product.
• Further increase customer value by setting quantitative reliability objectives that precisely balance customer needs for reliability, timely delivery, and cost; engineer project strategies to meet them; and track reliability during test to guide release.

You will learn how to:

• Determine the reliability / availability your customers need for your product and engineer your process to deliver it
• Develop operational profiles to describe how customers will use your product
• Use operational profiles to:
  • Increase development efficiency
  • Allocate test cases and test time efficiently
  • Make test represent field use
• Process failure data to:
  • Certify components you acquire
  • Track reliability growth and guide release of systems you develop

About the Author

John D. Musa is an independent consultant. He was formerly Technical Manager of Software Reliability Engineering (SRE) at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ. He has varied and extensive experience as a software developer and software development manager.

John Musa is one of the creators of the field of software reliability engineering (SRE). Principal author of the highly-acclaimed pioneering book "Software Reliability: Measurement, Prediction, Application" (McGraw-Hill), he has published some 100 papers. His new book "Software Reliability Engineering: More Reliable Software, Faster Development and Testing" (McGraw-Hill) focuses on practice. The IEEE elected him Fellow in 1986 for his many seminal contributions. He was recognized in 1992 as the person who had contributed the most to testing technology. His leadership has been noted by every recent edition of Who's Who in America and American Men and Women of Science.

Musa is widely recognized as the leader in the practical application of SRE. He initiated and spearheaded SRE practice at AT&T, resulting in its selection as a "Best Current Practice" and leading the team that codified that practice. He was involved in developing most of the details. His many contributions include the concept of execution time (used almost universally in the field today), the distinction between failures and faults, the operational profile and all its related technology, the ideas of operational development, Reduced Operation Software (ROS), the fault exposure ratio and software reliability prediction, and the integration of software reliability engineering into all phases of the software development process. He has been involved for some 25 years in deploying the practice, first within AT&T and afterwards worldwide through his consulting work.

He is an experienced international speaker and teacher (over 200 major presentations) with consistently outstanding feedback. One of the founders of the IEEE Technical Committee on Software Reliability Engineering, he is closely networked with the other leaders in the field, providing a broad perspective.