Dynamic release policies for software systems with a reliability constraint

We discuss the optimal release problem of computer software. A conditional non-homogeneous Poisson process model is used to describe the software reli ability growth behavior. By formulating with Markov decision programming, w e show that, to minimize the total discounted cost, the optimal release pol icy is threshold-type, which is easy to obtain and to implement. It is then extended to the model with a constraint on the system reliability, for whi ch a similar threshold-type control policy is proved to be optimal too.