CASRE (Computer Aided Software Reliability Estimation) was developed as a software reliability measurement tool that is easier for nonspecialists in reliability to use than many other currently-available tools. CASRE incorporates the mathematical modeling capabilities of the public domain tool SMERFS (Statistical Modeling and Estimation of Reliability Functions for Software), and runs in a Microsoft Windows environment. The command interface is menu driven; enabling and disabling of menu options guides users through the selection of a set of failure data, execution of a model, and analysis of model results. Input to the models is simultaneously displayed as text and as a high-resolution display that can be controlled to let users view the data in several different ways (e.g., time between successive failures, cumulative number of failures). Model predictions and statistical evaluations of a model's applicability may be superimposed on the plot of the data used as input to the model. CASRE also incorporates earlier findings - that prediction accuracy may be increased by combining the results of several models in a linear fashion. Users can define their own model combinations, store them as part of the tool's configuration, and execute them in the same way as any other model.

This tool would be particularly useful to software development organizations searching for ways to more effectively manage their development resources. Since CASRE has been designed with the non-specialist in mind, it should gain wider acceptance among managers and developers than those tools requiring detailed knowledge of the models.