Defect prediction operation

A computer-implementable method for predicting a defect within a computer program comprising:

• accessing a code base of the computer program, the code base of the computer program comprising a plurality of computer program files;
• analyzing a commit of the computer program to identity a risk value of a likelihood of a defect occurrence within each of the plurality of files of the computer program;
• and
• calculating a defect prediction metric for each of the plurality of computer programs, the defect prediction metric providing an objective measure of defect prediction for a plurality of files of the computer program, wherein calculating the defect prediction metric comprises:
• correlating the risk value with a time at which the defect occurrence is likely to appear with an exponential decay function to generate the defect prediction metric, wherein the risk value is a value within a range of risk values, a low risk value is at least 10 times lower than a high risk value, each of the risk values is calculated using the decay function and based on a commit time of each computer program, each of the risk values is linked to one of a set of particular times of a next defect of the computer program associated with the risk value, and the linkage of each of the risk values to the particular times correlates to the decay function;
• and
• providing the defect prediction metric for use in mitigating risk associated with the defect predictions for the computer program.