Optimal stopping in software testing

In this paper we address the problem of how to decide when to terminate the testing/modification process and to release the software during the development phase. We present a Bayesian decision theoretic approach by formulating the optimal release problem as a sequential decision problem. By using a non‐Gaussian Kalman filter type model, proposed by Chen and Singpurwalla (1994), to track software reliability, we are able to obtain tractable expressions for inference and determine a one‐stage look ahead stopping rule under reasonable conditions and a class of loss functions. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2003