Supporting SW-FMEA through an ontology-based methodology

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a widely used dependability and safety technique aiming at systematically identifying failure modes, their causes, their effects, and the countermeasures that could mitigate their impact. Although FMEA has been thought for hardware, its use is also advocated for software (SW-FMEA). However, this involves several major hurdles such as the complexity of functional requirements and the difficulty to identify failure modes of SW components. We present an approach for efficient and effective manipulation of data involved in the SW-FMEA process, introducing an ontological model that formalizes concepts comprised in the analysis and provides a common conceptual framework supporting cohesion across different stages of a development lifecycle. The ontological model opened the way to the implementation of a tool, which automates SW-FMEA providing support for basic and advanced functionalities, fastening the analysis. Use of the tool in a real SW development process is discussed at the end of the paper.