Empirical study of root cause analysis of software failure

Abstract

Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is the process of identifying project issues, correcting them and taking preventive actions to avoid occurrences of such issues in the future. Issues could be variance in schedule, effort, cost, productivity, expected results of software, performance parameters and customer satisfaction. RCA also involves collecting valid data, analyzing it, deriving metrics and finding root causes using RCA methods. In this paper we will do Root cause analysis of some severe software failures that happened in the past and of some failures in ongoing projects in the software Industry. We will also describe various RCA methods and processes used in the software Industry to reduce the chances of software failure.