Patterns for Development of Safety-Critical Systems with Agile: Trace Safety Requirements and Perform Automated Testing

Abstract

In safety-critical systems keeping complete trace of requirements and detailed testing is an extremely relevant part of software development life cycle. Safety standards like ISO 26262, DO178C and many others prescribe that critical requirements must be completely traceable. These standards also demand detailed and regression testing of system. Here we present some patterns that deal with these concerns in an agile way. First set of patterns describe the key mechanism to list the sources of safety requirements and a mechanism for traceability of those requirements. It uses an approach that satisfies safety standards and adapts agile behavior where possible. The second pattern is about test automation for safety-critical systems, which complements our first set of patterns. It decreases the amount of documentation required for traceability and testing of features but without any compromise on essential testing. These patterns will facilitate the team to perform requirement's traceability and regular, rigorous testing in a timely and cost efficient manner.