Requirements, configuration management and traceability for safety critical software
George Romanski · Journal of Lightwave Technology · 2004
Software requirements are the focal point from which traceability to all related artifacts are established during the certification of safety critical software. For the certification of air-borne software, the guidance document DO-178B, requires that the link between requirements, design, code and tests be documented and verified. The DO-178B document does not describe how this should be done, but it permits the reengineering of information that is missing, to support the certification of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products. Requirements were entered in a database and evolved through a sequence that enforced the states described in company process documents. The design descriptions, source code, tests, results and so on were maintained in a configuration management (CM) system. The final audit was successful and the CD-ROM delivery of a requirements based certification package was accepted and commended. The details of the approach and the lessons learned were presented.