Lessons Learned from Incorporation of Commercial Computer Aided Software Engineering Tools in a Flight Critical Software Test Environment

In flight critical, software intensive, avionics systems, a major technical and managerial component is the testing and analysis of the developed software. In many of these systems the software must be “ultra-reliable” (work the first time and every time) and produced within schedule and budget. In this paper, we will examine how an existing successful software verification and validation project incorporated commercial computer aided software engineering (CASE) tools. The paper examines the original approach, how CASE and new tool concepts have been incorporated within this approach, and some observed impacts to cost and quality. A final section identifies the challenges that were faced during development of the test system.