This book reviews existing operational software failure analysis techniques and proposes
near-miss analysis as a novel and new technique for investigating and preventing software
failures. The authors provide details on how near-miss analysis techniques focus on the
time-window before the software failure actually unfolds so as to detect the high-risk
conditions that can lead to a major failure. They detail how by alerting system users of an
upcoming software failure the detection of near misses provides an opportunity to collect at
runtime failure-related data that is complete and relevant. They present a near-miss management
systems (NMS) for detecting upcoming software failures which can contribute significantly to
the improvement of the accuracy of the software failure analysis. A prototype of the NMS is
implemented and is discussed in the book. The authors give a practical hands-on approach
towards doing software failure investigations by means of near-miss analysis that is of use to
industry and academia
