Exact expressions for the expected number of surfaced failure modes and system failure intensity as functions of test time are presented under the assumption that the surfaced modes are mitigated through corrective actions. These exact expressions depend on a large number of parameters. Functional forms are derived to approximate these quantities that depend on only a few parameters. Such parsimonious approximations are suitable for developing reliability growth plans and portraying the associated planned growth path. Simulation results indicate that the functional form of the derived parsimonious approximations can adequately represent the expected reliability growth associated with a variety of patterns for the failure mode initial rates of occurrence. A sequence of increasing MTBF target values can be constructed from the parsimonious MTBF projection approximation based on the following: (1) planning parameters that determine the parsimonious approximation; (2) corrective action mean lag time with respect to implementation and; (3) test schedule that gives the number of planned reliability, availability, and maintainability (RAM) test hours per month and specifies corrective action implementation periods