To support software project managers for reliability evaluation, the company Mathix and the French telecommunications agency (France Telecom) have developed a CASE tool named M-elopee. The purpose of this tool is not only to provide some reliability growth model computations but, more generally, to propose an approach to do reliability studies, and therefore to offer all the features needed to undertake this approach. M-elopee typically promotes the transfer of software reliability technology to practice. Therefore it runs on PCs under Windows and benefits from the many facilities of this environment. This article describes the functionalites provided by M-elopee and its underlying methodology. Mainly, the following points are developed: the content and structure of the data processed by M-elopee; data processing; trend analysis; comparison of models; and the maximum number of failures to forecast.

A quality control workshop prototype based on a quantitative approach which is operational from the validation phase was developed. Several telecommunications software systems were analyzed, particularly those areas pertaining to complexity and reliability. The workshop, the methods use to collect, handle, and analyze data, and the tools employed are described. The results allow evaluation of tool usefulness, pertinence of metrics, and validation of the reliability model. It is noted that the research carried out will lead to the application and evaluation of software quality assurance plans and to the evaluation of current beliefs concerning validity, efficiency, and costs.>