Relating Safety Requirements and System Design through Problem Oriented Software Engineering

Mannering, Derek; Hall, Jon G. and Rapanotti, Lucia (2006). Relating Safety Requirements and System Design through Problem Oriented Software Engineering. Technical Report 2006/11; Department of Computing, The Open University.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.00016049

Abstract

Standards mandate the demonstration of safety properties for industrial software, starting at the initial requirements phase. The processes involved are iterative, with the choice of potential solution architecture being a driver for the discovery of system failure modes. Managing the resulting development is a complex task. Problem Oriented Software Engineering brings together many non-formal and formal aspects of software development, providing a structure within which the results of different development activities can be combined and reconciled. This paper illustrates how problem orientation can support the development task of a safety-critical system through its ability to elaborate, transform and analyse the project requirements, reason about the effect of partially detailed candidate architectures, and traceably audit design rationale through iterative development. The approach is validated through its application to an industrial case study.