Reliability Lab Testing, Consulting, Training.

Ops a la Carte

Call: (408) 654-0499, x204

Email: info@OPSaLaCarte.com

Engineering Success with Reliable Products.

Software Reliability

Software Reliability

OBJECTIVES

Unlike electrical and mechanical reliability practices, software reliability is not common within development. This Software Design for Reliability Seminar highlights various topics in software reliability and explains their application and positive impact to the development life cycle phases: Concept, Design, Implementation, and Testing. The seminar covers reliability concepts, planning and software development “best practices” to form the starting point for integrating reliability practices. Then, overviews of reliability techniques from the remaining phases are presented along with explanations of how they can be integrated into a reliability program. This seminar presents a practical approach to software reliability. The seminar is intended for software engineers and managers that are directly involved in software development and want to understand reliability concepts and practices that will improve the reliability of their product software.

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WHO SHOULD ATTEND

This course is intended for those who want a better understanding of how to design and test more reliable software in less time.

MODULE LIST

This seminar is comprised of the following training modules. A description of each module follows the list below:

  1. Software Development Life Cycle Best Practices
  2. Reliability Concepts for Software
  3. Integrating Reliability Practices into the Software Development Life Cycle
  4. Development Phase Reliability Practices
  5. Software Fault Tolerance
  6. Software Reliability Testing
  7. Software Reliability Planning

Each training module is described in the following section.

TRAINING MODULE DESCRIPTIONS

(1) Software Development Life Cycle Best Practices

Despite the commonality of software development practices across industries, companies generate products with different levels of quality and reliability. For this reason, this module focuses on “best practices” for defect removal shared by companies that consistently produce high quality software. After presenting a methodology for measuring defect removal efficiency at each development phase, we then evaluate the effectiveness of integrating various practices into your existing life cycle. We conclude the module with a closer look at design and code inspections; what works, what doesn’t and why.

(2) Reliability Concepts for Software

This module reviews the basic software reliability concepts. To clarify the source of frequent ambiguity, Quality vs. Reliability is examined closely and the characteristics of reliable software are identified. Defects, faults and failures terminology and a 2-level failure classification scheme are established. General reliability concepts that apply to software are presented, including failure rates, system availability, interface robustness, and fault tolerance.

(3) Integrating Reliability Practices into the Software Development Life Cycle

Companies follow various approaches in an attempt to develop reliable software. These traditional approaches are examined for their strengths and weaknesses. Then, a practical approach is introduced that allows for the reliability practices to be integrated by developers into the software life cycle. As with any project, the path to achieving reliability goals is defined by a plan. Next, modeling concepts are introduced as sources for early prediction and late estimation of defect and failure rate data. Design and implementation reliability practices are reviewed and grouped based on objectives. Reliability testing goals and techniques are reviewed for their contribution to the test cycle and reliability criteria. Finally, measurements and metrics are presented as a foundation for all reliability practices.

(4) Development Phase Reliability Practices

This module reviews various reliability practices that apply during the design and implementation phases. System functionality is captured in usage profiles developed from the architectural specification and refined throughout the design phase. Then various analysis techniques are reviewed. The system and HW failure analyses can be leveraged in defining software failure modes. The software can then be analyzed to identify critical and vulnerable sections as focal points for inspections and fault tolerance. We also review guidelines for high reliability derived from the software safety development. This module shows how to mitigate the occurrence of interface defects as a major source of run-time failures by defining robust interface specifications and enforcing them with defensive programming techniques. We present a review technique that combines aspects of several existing inspection methods and utilizes historical data, failure analysis results and usage profiles to identify defects that are likely to result in run-time failures.

(5) Software Fault Tolerance

For systems running at customer installations, fault tolerance offers a last line of defense against failures by focusing on increasing availability. Fault tolerance has become synonymous with either hardware redundancy or software exception handling. This module presents several valuable, but lesser-known, techniques to address many common failure scenarios. This module also addresses the general case with guidelines to evaluate fault tolerance techniques and incorporate them into an overall system design. For systems that are continuously running over very long periods of time, the concept of software rejuvenation is introduced to counteract software aging effect.

(6) Software Reliability Testing

This module addresses reliability practices during both unit and system-level testing. The most prevalent failures encountered during development, testing and early deployment are trivial, run-time failures characterized as deterministic and easily reproducible, even after a system restart or reboot. The main goal of unit testing should be to identify as many of these types of failures as possible for removal, prior to system-level testing.

The techniques used to achieve these goals are:

  • Interface robustness testing using equivalence classes and boundary value analysis
  • Testing fault tolerant code
  • Practical usage of code coverage
  • Defect density analysis using change management
  • Certifying 3rd party software

Traditional system-level testing incorporates various types of testing to verify functionality and detect failures for repair. Usage profiles increase the efficiency of traditional testing by providing mechanisms for test case definition and prioritization. Moreover, these usage profiles can drive reliability testing to determine software failure rates and measure reliability growth.

(7) Software Reliability Planning

All too often, development organizations seek to improve the reliability of their product software but are uncertain of how to define and achieve their reliability goals. This module demonstrates how this can be accomplished by developing a reliability plan. Initially, the planning endpoints must be determined by assessing the current reliability baseline and defining the reliability targets of the current project. Then, the elements of a reliability plan are reviewed, including establishing goals, making initial predictions, measuring progress, and verifying reliability at each phase.

Call Us: (408) 654-0499, x204

Email Us: info@OPSaLaCarte.com

Address: 990 Richard Ave, Suite 101, Santa Clara, CA 95050

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Empowering companies to create happy customers, with well-engineered products.

Script

OPS A La Carte, Engineering Success with Reliable Products. We are a leading reliability engineering consulting firm since 2001. We have helped many companies create robust products and elevate them to great success, even become the leader in their industry. We are known for providing the whole gamut of reliability lab testing, consulting, and training. With over 25 reliability engineer-experts around the world, with diverse backgrounds and experience, we serve both domestic and global businesses in all areas of reliability, in depth and width. Hi, my name is Jay Muns, owner and CEO. I have more than 30 years of experience in engineering and business operations.

OPS A La Carte have produced very high-quality results for us, with fast turnaround times. Their engineers are the best in their field, are a pleasure to work with, and their work is of the highest standards available. This has helped us obtain critical product approvals…” We help companies see from outside of their forest and understand what they didn’t know before. Companies come to us out of three scenarios: First, when their products fail. We help put out the fire by identifying problems and providing solutions. Second, after a product is designed, to check the box and move on with getting their product into the marketplace. The best is third: to get engaged early, by including reliability as a part of their initial product design goals. This will save time, money and energy. It is much better to have a worry-free product that addresses reliability issues upfront, than dealing with deficiencies after a product is developed, or worse, already manufactured and sold to the end users. Being proactive with reliability engineering will save a business tons of money and trouble. In all scenarios, you receive professional expertise with integrity and at a fair price. Many of our clients are repeat customers for years because of the value we consistently deliver.

Our ENGINEER-consultants each have over 20 years of experience and perform lab testing, consulting and training based on actual reliability science. They follow well established industry standards, such as “HALT” (highly accelerated life test,) and “HASS” (highly accelerated stress screen.) These engineers evaluate, make recommendations and validate results based on highly relevant lab data, co-relating to real world data. Whether your company has a reliability department or not, you can take advantage of our entire testing-consulting-training package, or any portion of it. We also offer Failure analysis and safety certification services such as UL, CE, and other environmental testing services, like solar, UV, SALT spray testing, ESD (electro-static discharge,) and EMC (electro-magnetic compatibility.)

“Ops A La Carte trained us to use HALT methodology as a proactive tool, to root out key failures in our early and advanced prototypes, and that made it possible for us to deliver dependability that our customers demand, in pilot and production units."“...OPS has played a key role in our evolution from a research company to a manufacturer of ‘mission-critical’ components.” A couple of companies describe our HALT/HASS training as “highly informative, engaging and exciting.” “The benefit far exceeds the price."

Our mission is to enable companies to create their happy customers, with a well-engineered product. By helping our clients understand the real problems and the real solutions, we help improve their careers and reputations. Achieving the win-win-win results for our clients and their customers is our ultimate satisfaction. We have a family-like company culture with positive energy and great teamwork. An improved and reliable product is our own small way to contribute to a better humanity and a slightly better world. Call us at (408) 654-0499, or email us at info@opsalacarte.com, or visit our website www.opsalacarte.com. Thank you!

A couple of our clients' testimonials:

"The expert team at OPS assisted us in evaluating the available reliability testing possibilities, and with their help, we crafted a customized test program precisely sized to meet the needs of our project. The resulting program proved to our team, our customers, and our regulatory auditors that our product was robust, met its reliability goals effectively, and satisfied all safety risk factors."

"...Ops A La Carte worked with us to develop a testing program based on HALT and HASS to effectively assess low-temperature operation capability and screen the boards for assembly and component defects. They then facilitated and supported the HALT and HASS testing effort. It was quicker and more efficient than we had expected. The boards for the first four strings have been delivered. We are looking forward to working with them through completion of the project."