Benefits of Defect Ratio Analysis

Measurement and Analysis is the key of process improvement or taking any decision. And Metrics is the most useful tool for Measurement and Analysis. A single Metrics can give us lot of information for decision making. In this post I have tried to explain the benefits of Defect Ratio analysis.

Defect Ratio is a measure as well as a metrics of defects against product size. If your product size is 500 Use Case Point and total number of defects are 200 then Defect Ratio is (200/500) = 0.4. We can analyze the defect ratios by calculating the defect ratio in different time period of a project.

Lets, one of an objective of our processes is to ensure that our defect ratio will be less then 0.45 and variation of the defect ratios will not be more then 0.1. Then in a project we have used those processes, calculated the defect ratios in different time period and plotted the following graph.

From the graph we can say:

1. The Process is not good enough to achieve the objective of ensuring the defect ratio <= 0.45


2. The Process is not stable or matured enough. Because, the variation of the defect ratio is more then 0.1 (0.54-0.35 = .19)


3. Project team is not skilled enough to make sure the defect ratio <0.45

We can also take decision from the graph to improve our processes or increase the skill level of our project team.

People, Process and Technology

We are always trying to do more in less time; that’s why new technology are inventing, software is one of those technology. Once upon a time it was thought that software development is fully depending on human creativity. But day by day it is proved that it is pure engineering function and that’s why process are being developed to run this engineering function. As a result effort is reducing on Human Resource day by day in software development.

But we are not happy on that, we want to develop good quality software in less time. For this reason we are using different tools to increase our productivity in software development. For example, we are using tools for code generation, code review, testing etc. which activities were fully done by people in early stage.





Now, it is proven concept that to compete and survive in the rapid changing software technology industry we have to use processes and tools to increase the productivity of the professionals. And those companies are doing well who have developed an optimized framework with People, Process and Technology/Tools.

In Bangladesh, we have talents for good code development, but we have shortage of process experts and we are weak in use of technology or tools. So, we have to focus in these two areas then software quality will automatically assure.