A Quality Evaluation Method for Software Testing about Safety-Critical Software

Abstract

Software testing is an important means for quality assurance about safety-critical software, the quality of software testing directly affects the quality of safety-critical software. The main quality evaluation method for software testing is constructing a testing quality evaluation model and using it to evaluate the quality. But, the existing research does not reflect the characteristics of safety-critical software. In this paper, we propose a quality evaluation model for software testing about safety-critical software which includes four aspects: compliance, stability, adequacy, and effectiveness. Every aspect contains some measure elements. The elements are assigned weights by Analytic Hierarchy Process. The elements and the weights are all considering the characteristics of safety-critical software. The evaluation result is obtained by synthesizing the weights and the measure values through the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method. The software’s quality under testing influences the result of software testing quality evaluation. In order to solve this problem, we calibrate some measure values in consideration of the software’s attributes. We validate the method with some practical projects, and the results show it is practical and effective.