A procedure for reliability-related quality programming is devel oped to fi ll existing gaps in software de sign and development so that a quality programming plan can be achieved. This study investigates the tradeoff between system reliability improvement and resource con sumption through the management phase. A software reliability-to cost relation is developed from both a software reliability-related cost model and software redundancy models with common-cause failures.The software reliability optimization problem can be formulated into a mixed-integer programming problem and solved by a branch-and b ound technique_ 0149 I44X/89/0000-0 04 1SOl.00 © 1989 IEEE Dr. Kuo is a senior member of IEEE, ASQC, lIE, and Sigma Xi. He has coauthored the text OptimIzation of Systems Reliability, published by Marcel Dekker, third printing, 1988, and is a guest editor of the IEEE Journal on Selected .4reas in Communications published by the IEEE Communica tions Society in 1986.