Software safety assurance

Safety assurance ensures that aviation service providers continuously practice their safety program and that their safety program continues to remain effective even as their operating environment changes. Safety assurance may turn the focus to quality management; therefore, a safety management system contains many elements of a quality management system.

Continuously monitoring the effectiveness of your SMS strengthens your safety culture and helps ensure continuous system improvement. Monitoring both internal and external systems allow operators to detect changes that may either:. Corrective actions and preventive actions stemming from reported issues and audit findings must be considered relevant to safety assurance.

Include stakeholders affected by the plan in the reviews for awareness of planned activities and so that their suggestions can be addressed within the bounds of the project's required level of software assurance. Any identified issues need to be corrected before plan implementation or before carrying out affected software assurance activities in the next life-cycle phase. Any changes to the baselined SAP typically baselined at PDR Preliminary Design Review need to be made via the appropriate formal change request process internal to the project for the acquirer SAP or via NASA's formal change request process for the provider SAP and be accompanied by a risk analysis to ensure the project's level of software assurance is not compromised.

The acquirer software assurance personnel are responsible for ensuring the provider software assurance personnel are meeting the contents of the provider SAP. The acquirer SAP describes how this will be done based on software size, software class, safety criticality, and other factors that may be specific to a project. Guidance related to software assurance and to be considered for inclusion in the SAP may be found in the following related requirements in this Handbook:.

Click here to view master references table. The purpose is to provide examples of tools being used across the Agency and to help projects and centers decide what tools to consider. There must be a software assurance plan. But the success of any undertaking is to know what one is trying to achieve and how one expects to accomplish it, hence, the necessity of a plan for SQA.

The plan will specify the goals, what is to be performed, standards against which the development work is to be measured, all relevant procedures, and the organizational structure of the Quality Assurance within the project.

At NASA a software assurance plan is required. Return to Software Engineering Community of Practice. Introduction Book B. This development process has been continuously subject to several rigorous audits by customers as well as regulatory authorities. In the railway domain, a typical requirement may be adherence to EN Software safety assurance in products and projects is concluded with the provision of a software safety assurance report.

Should you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us directly! Main navigation Industries. Air Traffic Management. Voice Communications. Remote Digital Tower. His contributions include the Constructive Cost Model family of cost models, the Spiral family of process models, and the Theory W win-win approach for creating and evolving successful systems.

He is a fellow of the primary professional societies in computing Association for Computing Machinery , aerospace American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, electronics Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers , systems engineering International Council on Systems Engineering and the Lean Systems Society, and a member of the U. National Academy of Engineering. This handbook will provide an overview of Complex Electronics, the design process and assurance activities.

It discusses. The purpose of this standard is to define the requirements for a software inspection process aimed at detecting and eliminating defects as early as possible in the software life cycle. This process can be used for any documented product, however, this standard focuses on its use for software products — i.

The process provides for the collection and analysis of inspection data to improve the inspection process as well as the quality of the software. The focus of this document is on analysis, development and assurance of safety-critical software, including firmware e. This document also discusses issues with contractor-developed software. It provides guidance on how to address creation and assurance of safety-critical software within the overall software development, management, risk management and assurance activities.

Software engineering is a core capability and a key enabling technology for NASA's missions and supporting infrastructure. This directive establishes the engineering requirements for software acquisition, development, maintenance, retirement, operations and management consistent with the governance model contained in NASA Policy Directive The purpose of this document is to clearly articulate and establish the requirements on the implementing organization for performing systems engineering.

Systems engineering is a logical systems approach performed by multidisciplinary teams to engineer and integrate NASA's systems to ensure NASA products meet customers' needs. Implementation of this systems approach will enhance NASA's core engineering capabilities while improving safety, mission success and affordability.

This systems approach is applied to all elements of a system i. This document establishes the requirements by which NASA will formulate and execute information technology and institutional infrastructure programs and projects, consistent with the governance model contained in the NASA Governance and Strategic Management Handbook NPD This course is taught in a team-oriented manner that integrates instructor-led practice exercises and a main team exercise with the lectures to emphasize key aspects.

This allows the students to practice the concepts in a learning environment. If desired, the center can identify specific projects for use during the exercises to help provide a real-world setting. At the end of each day, feedback will be gathered from the students in order to tailor adjustments to the specific class.

This course is for software engineers, Software Assurance personnel and other professionals who are involved in assessing and improving software engineering processes. The course provides an overview of the concepts of processes and process improvement. Participants are taught how to identify measurement goals, select, collect and analyze metrics.

Participants are also taught how to use metric data to improve processes. This course is an introductory course that introduces terms, principles and activities of software reliability engineering. Design concepts, analytical techniques and mathematical methods that are used to assess and improve the reliability of the system are presented.

The course is comprised of six lessons: introduction and definitions, examples of software problems that have caused failures, designing reliable software, analytical techniques for software reliability, quantitative assessment of software reliability, and examples of how fault tolerance is used in reliable computing.

This course introduces systems and software engineering managers and practitioners, appraisal team members, and engineering process group members to CMMI fundamental concepts. CMMI models are tools that help organizations improve their ability to develop and maintain quality products and services.

CMMI models are an integration of best practices from proven discipline-specific process improvement models. This is an intermediate-level course for software engineers, Software Assurance personnel and other professionals that are involved in the development, testing, assurance, and verification and validation of software. The course will provide participants with a thorough understanding of software-testing approaches, activities and documents.

Participants learn how to define, implement, analyze and assess testing activities that occur during system development, acceptance and maintenance. Types of testing such as white box, black box, model-based, functional, stress and regression are taught as well as considerations in testing such as coverage, traceability and system safety.

Test planning and management is also covered. Participants also are taught how to develop test documentation e. The course is composed of mandatory pre-class assignments, class lectures, student presentations and class exercises and is presented in a facilitative style designed to create dialog among students and instructors.

This style of interaction is designed to help each student gain a deeper understanding of the concepts and practices described in CMMI models. Those successfully completing the course will be able to understand the interrelationships among model components e.

Software inspection is a well-defined review process for finding and fixing defects in work products from all phases of software development. Inspections have proven time and again to be one of the most effective practices available for ensuring quality software and on-time deliveries.

The participants leave with a list of real defects identified and clear guidance on how to proceed. The course is composed of class lectures and exercises presented in a style that creates dialog among students and instructors.

Course topics include an overview of System Safety and of software development, NASA requirements for software System Safety, software System Safety programs, implementing a software System Safety program, software hazard analysis including the application of Fault Tree and Failure Modes and Effects Analysis to software, software System Safety design techniques, and software System Safety assurance techniques.

The course provides details to planning, scoping and tailoring Software Safety efforts. Participants learn to determine the criticality and complexity of software by analyzing technical requirements and to determine the appropriate analyses and Software Safety activities to perform for various types of software. Certification process activities are detailed. Acquiring safety-critical software via solicitations also is presented. The participants will learn how to develop a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis and critical items list for software and how to use them to mitigate system risks.

The participants also will learn how to perform a FTA on software and how to use the software fault trees to mitigate system risks. This is a hour course designed to provide a knowledge base and practical skills for anyone interested in improving the software quality auditing techniques and practices for conducting individual audits.