Advances in Artefact Quality Analysis for Safety-Critical Systems

Safety-critical systems are subject to rigorous verification and validation activities to guarantee that their quality is sufficient and acceptable. Quality analysis does not only need to be performed on the systems themselves, but also on their associated artefacts, e.g. system specifications. Such an analysis is essential for early quality assessment and so that system development progresses in compliance with standards. However, the analysis is challenging and labour-intensive for large complex systems, thus practitioners need means that facilitate it. This paper presents recent advances in artefact quality analysis for safety-critical systems. The presented industrial tools and practices are part of the products and services provided by The REUSE Company, have been developed in collaborative research projects, and are already available to its customers. We introduce the management and use of requirements metrics, model metrics, checklists, quality evolution, and connectors. This information demonstrates (1) how artefact quality analysis is progressing in practice and (2) what artefact quality analysis needs are being fulfilled.