The Importance of Life Cycle Modeling to Defect Detection and Prevention

  • Authors:

  • J. H. van Moll;J. C. Jacobs;B. Freimut;J. J. M. Trienekens

  • Affiliations:

  • -;-;-;-

  • Venue:
  • STEP '02 Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Software Technology and Engineering Practice
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

In many low mature organizations dynamic testing isoften the only defect detection method applied. Thus,defects are detected rather late in the developmentprocess. High rework and testing effort, typically undertime pressure, lead to unpredictable delivery dates anduncertain product quality. This paper presents severalmethods for early defect detection and prevention thathave been in existence for quite some time, although notall of them are common practice. However, to use thesemethods operationally and scale them to a particularproject or environment, they have to be positionedappropriately in the life cycle, especially in complexprojects.Modeling the development life cycle, that is theconstruction of a project-specific life cycle, is anindispensable first step to recognize possible defectinjection points throughout the development project andto optimize the application of the available methods fordefect detection and prevention. This paper discusses theimportance of Life Cycle Modeling for defect detectionand prevention and presents a set of concrete, provenmethods that can be used to optimize defect detectionand prevention. In particular, software inspections,static code analysis, defect measurement and defectcausal analysis are discussed. These methods allowearly, low cost detection of defects, preventing them frompropagating to later development stages and preventingthe occurrence of similar defects in future projects.