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How many individuals to use in a QA task with fixed total effort? - Defect detection as a function of time

Mäntylä, Mika LU ; Petersen, K. and Pfahl, Dietmar LU (2012) 6th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) p.311-314
Abstract
Increasing the number of persons working on quality assurance (QA) tasks, e.g., reviews and testing, increases the number of defects detected – but it also increases the total effort unless effort is controlled with fixed effort budgets. Our research investigates how QA tasks should be configured regarding two parameters, i.e., time and number of people. We define an optimization problem to answer this question. As a core element of the optimization problem we discuss and describe how defect detection probability should be modeled as a function of time. We apply the formulas used in the definition of the optimization problem to empirical defect data of an experiment previously conducted with university students. The results show that the... (More)
Increasing the number of persons working on quality assurance (QA) tasks, e.g., reviews and testing, increases the number of defects detected – but it also increases the total effort unless effort is controlled with fixed effort budgets. Our research investigates how QA tasks should be configured regarding two parameters, i.e., time and number of people. We define an optimization problem to answer this question. As a core element of the optimization problem we discuss and describe how defect detection probability should be modeled as a function of time. We apply the formulas used in the definition of the optimization problem to empirical defect data of an experiment previously conducted with university students. The results show that the optimal choice of the number of persons depends on the actual defect detection probabilities of the individual defects over time, but also on the size of the effort budget. Future work will focus on generalizing the optimization problem to a larger set of parameters, including not only task time and number of persons but also experience and knowledge of the personnel involved, and methods and tools applied when performing a QA task. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; and
organization
publishing date
type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
published
subject
host publication
[Host publication title missing]
pages
311 - 314
publisher
IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
conference name
6th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM)
conference location
Lund, Sweden
conference dates
2012-09-19 - 2012-09-20
external identifiers
  • wos:000319423700042
ISSN
1938-6451
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
e4e34bc3-031b-4f20-b727-9fba5bfa9b19 (old id 3052928)
alternative location
https://wiki.aalto.fi/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=69894854
date added to LUP
2016-04-01 14:14:07
date last changed
2021-05-06 20:07:00
@inproceedings{e4e34bc3-031b-4f20-b727-9fba5bfa9b19,
  abstract     = {{Increasing the number of persons working on quality assurance (QA) tasks, e.g., reviews and testing, increases the number of defects detected – but it also increases the total effort unless effort is controlled with fixed effort budgets. Our research investigates how QA tasks should be configured regarding two parameters, i.e., time and number of people. We define an optimization problem to answer this question. As a core element of the optimization problem we discuss and describe how defect detection probability should be modeled as a function of time. We apply the formulas used in the definition of the optimization problem to empirical defect data of an experiment previously conducted with university students. The results show that the optimal choice of the number of persons depends on the actual defect detection probabilities of the individual defects over time, but also on the size of the effort budget. Future work will focus on generalizing the optimization problem to a larger set of parameters, including not only task time and number of persons but also experience and knowledge of the personnel involved, and methods and tools applied when performing a QA task.}},
  author       = {{Mäntylä, Mika and Petersen, K. and Pfahl, Dietmar}},
  booktitle    = {{[Host publication title missing]}},
  issn         = {{1938-6451}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{311--314}},
  publisher    = {{IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}},
  title        = {{How many individuals to use in a QA task with fixed total effort? - Defect detection as a function of time}},
  url          = {{https://wiki.aalto.fi/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=69894854}},
  year         = {{2012}},
}