Software safety encompasses all areas of business operations including job hazard analysis, incident management, inspections, auditing and ergonomics.
Safety of a system refers to the potential for the system to cause harm. As software cannot cause harm directly, software safety requirements are requirements which constrain the software to behave in ways which do not contribute unacceptably to system safety violations within a given context of use.
Because software safety is a concept which is only meaningful within a system context, it follows that software safety requirements must be obtained from information about hazards of the wider system. Consequently, any restriction on information pertaining to these hazards can lead to ambiguous or conflicting software safety requirements.
Besides the potential for injury, the total cost of poor software quality in the U.S. is estimated at $2.08 trillion.
Software safety is extremely important in all sectors, including the Department of Defense. The degree of importance is illustrated in the last revision of Military Standard (MIL-STD) 882E, which added software systems safety techniques and practices.
The improved software safety process resulted in minimizing risks to soldiers during an Urgent Materiel Release (UMR) of PDB-8 and identified firmware as the next target for improvement.
Additionally, as part of development of PDB-8.1 a software and hardware component was changed resulting in a significant reduction in Safety Critical Requirements (SCR) as shown by a reduction in Software Hardware Risk Indexes (SHRI) 1 through 4.
Want to learn more? Tonex offers Software Safety Training, a 3-day course that covers all aspects of Software Safety focusing on philosophies and methods in software safety and its primary objectives.
Additionally, Tonex offers several more courses in Software Safety including:
—Software Safety Course for Managers (2 days)
—Software Safety Programming and Software Coding Standards (2 days)
—Software Safety Training Workshop (2 days)
—Software Safety, Hazards Analysis and Risk Management Training Workshop (3 days)
—Software System Safety Engineering Training (3 days)
For more information, questions, comments, contact us.