A literature survey of the quality economics of defect-detection techniques

TL;DR

This survey reviews empirical studies on defect-detection techniques, linking them to a software quality economics model to enable better comparison and practical application, while highlighting areas needing further research.

Contribution

It provides average values for key quantities in defect detection and connects empirical results with a quality economics model for improved analysis.

Findings

Provides average values for defect detection metrics

Links empirical data with a software quality economics model

Identifies gaps for future research in defect detection

Abstract

Over the last decades, a considerable amount of empirical knowledge about the efficiency of defect-detection techniques has been accumulated. Also a few surveys have summarised those studies with different focuses, usually for a specific type of technique. This work reviews the results of empirical studies and associates them with a model of software quality economics. This allows a better comparison of the different techniques and supports the application of the model in practice as several parameters can be approximated with typical average values. The main contributions are the provision of average values of several interesting quantities w.r.t. defect detection and the identification of areas that need further research because of the limited knowledge available.