Determining the optimal software warranty period under various operational circumstances

Purpose – To determine the optimal software warranty period in continuous and discrete circumstances where the difference between the software testing environment and the operational environment can be characterised by an environment factor. Design/methodology/approach – Software reliability models based on continuous and discrete time non‐homogeneous Poisson processes are assumed to describe the failure occurrence phenomena under both environments. Based on the idea of accelerated life testing for hardware products, the operational profile of the software is modeled, and the total expected software cost incurred in both testing and operational phases is formulated. Findings – Under a milder condition, the optimal warranty period which minimizes the total software cost is derived analytically. Originality/value – This paper introduces the operational profile of software to model the difference between the testing environment and the operational environment.