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Situational Factors in Safety Critical Software Development

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Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement (EuroSPI 2016)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 633))

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Abstract

The generic software development situational factors model has been developed in order that environments within which software is developed can be profiled and better understood. Situational context is a complex concern for software developers, with a broad set of situational factors holding the potential to affect any one software development project. Safety critical software development is broadly similar to other kinds of software development/ engineering. But there are some additional or more dominant situational factors. In this article we conduct a conceptual experiment to define safety critical software development context using situational factors. Eleven such factors are identified, with some of the factors requiring elaboration beyond the detail presently available in the generic situational factors model. We firstly discuss the appropriateness of the selected factors in generic safety critical software development context. Thereafter we apply the selected factors to the medical device and nuclear power domains. Selected situational factors can be used as a high level profile and starting point for more detailed process and safety assessment. Discussion about potential use cases and further development needs is also presented.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Such “generic safety critical software” may not exist, because most industry sectors use their own standards. Note also that terminology may vary in standards, for example “safety-related software” or “software important for safety”.

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Acknowledgments

This research is supported in part by the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centres Programme, through Lero - the Irish Software Research Centre (http://www.lero.ie) grant 10/CE/I1855 & 13/RC/20194; and in part by the Finnish national nuclear safety program SAFIR2018 (http://safir2018.vtt.fi/).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. FiSMA Association, Espoo, Finland

    Risto Nevalainen

  2. Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland

    Paul Clarke & Rory V. O’Connor

  3. Lero, the Irish Software Research Centre, Limerick, Ireland

    Paul Clarke, Fergal McCaffery & Rory V. O’Connor

  4. Regulated Software Research Centre, Dundalk Institute of Technology, Dundalk, Ireland

    Fergal McCaffery

  5. Spinet Oy, Espoo, Finland

    Timo Varkoi

Authors
  1. Risto Nevalainen
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  2. Paul Clarke
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  3. Fergal McCaffery
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  4. Rory V. O’Connor
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  5. Timo Varkoi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Risto Nevalainen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria

    Christian Kreiner

  2. Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland

    Rory V. O'Connor

  3. Volkswagen AG, Wolfsburg, Germany

    Alexander Poth

  4. I.S.C.N. GesmbH, Graz, Austria

    Richard Messnarz

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Nevalainen, R., Clarke, P., McCaffery, F., O’Connor, R.V., Varkoi, T. (2016). Situational Factors in Safety Critical Software Development. In: Kreiner, C., O'Connor, R., Poth, A., Messnarz, R. (eds) Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement. EuroSPI 2016. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 633. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44817-6_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44817-6_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-44816-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-44817-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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