Generating test cases to evaluate and improve processes of safety-critical systems development

Abstract

DO-178C establishes considerations for developers, installers, and users to design software of embedded equipment in the aviation sector. Organizations must define processes and verify that they help to demonstrate that the DO-178C objectives are satisfied. We propose a test case generation method for process evaluation and improvement. The proposed method consists of an adaptation of the CoFI (Conformance and Fault Injection) approach to generate test cases to processes. Test cases verify if the deployed processes comply with their requirements. We applied the innovative approach to a corrective action process for safety-critical software reviews. The results show that the method is helpful to elicit and analyze unexpected behaviors.