FMECA Applied to Software Development
Robert W. Stoddard II · 2012
This chapter discusses a method describing how failure modes and effects criticality analysis (FMECA) may best be applied to software development in the context of different software artifacts and the software development life cycle. Software FMECA may be applied in a number of flexible ways at different points in software development and maintenance life cycles. Although still novel to the software development community in general, software FMECA is steadily gaining acceptance with development teams as a superior method of improving software quality. Additionally, software FMECA has served to bridge the cultural and process barriers that separate software developers and software test staff. Indeed, one may see similarities of the unified involvement of developers and testers in software FMECA with the strengths of agile, paired, and extreme programming. Controlled Vocabulary Terms failure analysis; life cycle costing; software engineering; software quality