This tutorial will present models for software reliability measurement and estimation during testing and earlier phases. The objective is to measure reliability and manage risk during software development.

The tutorial includes five major components:

1. Models to estimate and forecast the reliability of software systems. This covers models that can be used during the testing phase, as well as models that can be used prior to testing.
2. Data collection efforts. This describes the data that should be collected for reliability and risk measurement purpose, data formats, and their contents. We will also share some practical experience in collecting and using data.
3. Criteria for determining the most appropriate model, and for determining whether it is sensible to apply a model at all. This includes criteria that can be applied after one or more models have been executed, as well as tests that can be performed to determine whether model applications make any sense.
4. Increasing the predictive accuracy of models. Includes a discussion of linear combination models, as well as a discussion of how to recalibrate a model.
5. Software reliability modeling tools. Some of the better-known tools are described and compared in this discussion. The tools being discussed are also demonstrated for hands-on experience.

Presenter: Dr. Michael R. Lyu, Chinese University, Hong Kong

Dr. Michael R. Lyu is currently an Associate Professor at the Computer Science and Engineering department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a Technical Staff Member from 1988 to 1990. From 1990 to 1992 he was with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Iowa as an Assistant Professor. From 1992 to 1995, he was a Member of the Technical Staff in the Applied Research Area of the Bell Communications Research (Bellcore). From 1995 to 1997 he was a research Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Labs, which was first part of AT&T and later became part of Lucent Technologies.

Dr. Lyu's research interests include software reliability engineering, distributed systems, fault-tolerant computing, wireless communication networks, Web technologies, digital library, and E-commerce. He has participated more than 30 industrial projects in these areas, and helped to develop many commercial systems and software tools. He has been frequently invited as a keynote or tutorial speaker to conferences and workshops in U.S., Europe, and Asia. He initiated the first International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE) in 1990. He was the program chair for ISSRE'96, and has served in program committees for many conferences. He will serve as General Chair for ISSRE'2001, and he will be the WWW10 Program Co-Chair. He is the editor for two book volumes: Software Fault Tolerance, published by Wiley in 1995 and the Handbook of Software Reliability Engineering, published by IEEE and McGraw-Hill in 1996. He is also an associated editor of IEEE Transactions on Reliability, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, and Journal of Information Science and Engineering. He has published 90 refereed journal and conference papers.