Track 1 Session 4
2:20 to 3:20 p.m. Tuesday June 17, 2008

Practical Software Failure Analysis

In order to improve the reliability of their software, organizations can use software failure analysis and root cause analysis to determine the weaknesses of their development processes and reduce their defect density. The findings of failure and root cause analysis can be shared amongst all development teams through best practices documents or design guidelines, and used to drive process improvements. In addition, the results of failure analysis should be incorporated in the development training and design processes.

A set of steps are described in this presentation, which focuses on the best ways to utilize the failure and root cause analysis data and methodologies.

Key Words: Failure Analysis, SW FMEA, Causal Analysis, Code Review, Software Reliability, Defect Phase Containment