A comparison analysis of environmental factors affecting software reliability

Fifteen years ago, Zhang and Pham launched a survey to investigate the impact of software development environmental factors (EFs) on software reliability assessment. Software development has gone through substantial changes during the past fifteen years. How different the environmental factors have become? This paper aims to revisit the 32 environmental factors and analyze their impact on software development and reliability based on a current survey to software development practitioners. The participants of this study come from 20 various organizations and they hold different positions and work on different application areas. Statistical analysis method, such as principle component analysis, relative weighted method, Tukey method, backward elimination, and correlation analysis are applied to analyze these factors. We compare the findings in the two studies and list the most significant factors based on the general ranking and the principle components. The environmental factors in each development phase are also studied. Recommendations such as time allocation during software development process are also made.