Understanding the Sources of Software Defects: A Filtering Approach

This paper presents a method proposal of how to use product measures and defect data to enable understanding and identification of design and programming constructs that contribute more than expected to the defect statistics. The paper describes a method that can be used to identify the most defect-prone design and programming constructs and the method proposal is illustrated on data collected from a large software project in the telecommunication domain. The example indicates that it is feasible, based on defect data and product measures, to identify the main sources of defects in terms of design and programming constructs. Potential actions to be taken include less usage of particular design and programming constructs, additional resources for verification of the constructs and further education into how to use the constructs.