SOFTWARE SAFETY ENGINEERING

Many software safety programs are based solely on tasks and checklists combining software quality, and software verification efforts, and parroting language in RTCA DO-178 or RTCA DO-254.

First, software safety is not an independent effort. It is an integrated portion of all system safety engineering analysis and tasks. Software safety analyses must evaluate and understand the hardware architecture, firmware logic and software performance. The system safety process must be integrated, and software safety must incorporate a detailed requirements analysis to assess and/or influence software behaviors.

Contact SSSE to find out how to execute effective software safety analyses by defining the criteria necessary to identify software contributions to safety.