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Abstract:
Computers
are increasingly being introduced into critical
systems being an integral part of everyday
systems upon which millions of lives depend.
Even the most expensive, fully tested and
independently certified system can fail
months or even years afterwards. Software
fault prevention, fault tolerance, fault
removal and fault forecasting are the techniques
to be used for software in critical systems
as the contributors to its safety and reliability.
The problem
is about the immaturity existing today on
the techniques to be used in any of above
mentioned software fault handling mechanisms.
For example,
a combination of two techniques, first an
SFMEA (Software Failure Mode and Effects
Analysis) followed by SFTA (Software Fault
Tree Analysis), is used at SoftWcare in
this sequential order to analyze safety
and reliability of systems containing critical
software. This paper will focus on the results
of real case studies to demonstrate the
usefulness of this method in different domains
of application. Experiences contributing
to the improvement and effectiveness of
the method itself will also be presented.
We
can also present different fault tolerance
techniques used in real cases, and about
fault prevention ones.
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 Brief
CV:
Software Engineer since 1987 by the Politechnical
University in Madrid and Ph.D. by the Technical
University of Eindhoven. After few years
in different companies in Spain she joined
the European Space Agency as a staff member
(8 years) performing software product assurance
activities first and software engineering
activities later. Back to Spain she founded:
SoftWcare S.L. (www.softwcare.com) in 2001, located in Vigo
(Galicia – North of Spain), dedicated to
both ISVV and SW safety and dependability
evaluations (using SFMECA and SFTA techniques,
for example) and software process assessments
and improvement. She is dedicated to both
areas, performing software process assessment
and improvement activities to different
small and medium companies as well as to
multinational ones and in addition, she
performs criticality analyses critical SW
products in domains like space, air traffic
management and the automotive domains. She
is also performing some standardization
activities in different application domains
(medical, ISO, IEEE, EUROCONTROL, etc) and
currently being the editor of both space
domain standards ECSS-Q-80-03 – “Product
Assurance - Methods and techniques to support
the assessment of software dependability
and safety” and the ECSS-Q-80-02 – “Product
Assurance – Software process assessment
and improvement”. In addition, she is the
main tutor of SoftWcare’s training courses
on software quality, software verification
and validation, software engineering, software
safety and dependability engineering and
verification and software process assessment
and improvement. She is a member of the
EOQ SW committee since 1990.
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