Abstract: Commercial software development is a complex task that requires a thorough understanding of the architecture of the software system. In this talk we present an investigation of the Windows Server 2003 operating system in order to assess the relationship between its software dependencies, churn metrics and post-release failures. Our analysis indicates the ability of software dependencies and churn metrics to be efficient predictors of post-release failures. Further, we discuss the relationship between the software dependencies and churn metrics and their ability to assess failure-proneness probabilities at statistically significant levels.

Short Bio: Nachiappan Nagappan is a Researcher in the Software Reliability Research group at Microsoft Research based in Redmond, WA. He received his BTech degree from the University of Madras in 2001 and his MS and PhD degrees from North Carolina State University 2002 and 2005 respectively. His research interests include software measurement and reliability, statistical modeling and defect analysis.