Managing Software Defects

Defect analysis and traceability

Craig Henderson, June 2006. Revised and published in ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes July 2008

Abstract

This paper describes a mechanism for presenting software defect metrics to aid analysis. A graphical representation of the history of software builds is presented, that records software build quality in a way that cannot be displayed in a single numerical table, and is visually more appealing and more easily digestible than a series of related tables. The radial analysis charts can be used to represent derivative information in a two-dimensional form and is demonstrated with practical examples of Defect Analysis and Root Cause Analysis

Keywords. bugs, defect analysis, defect management, metrics, radial charts, software builds, software quality

Henderson, C. 2008. Managing software defects: defect analysis and traceability. SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes 33, 4 (Jul. 2008), 1-3.
DOI=http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1384139.1384141

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CRAIG HENDERSON holds a B.Sc. Honours Degree in Computing for Real Time Systems, has been a professional software engineer for over 11 years. His interests include systems programming, enterprise software and modern generic programming. He works in the UK as a Software Development Manager. He can be contacted at cdm.henderson@googlemail.com.

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See other papers by Craig.