Improving Documentation Agility in Safety-Critical Software Systems Development For Aerospace

Despite documentation being considered the pri-mary challenge to agile methods in safety-critical software systems development [1], agile would be of particular interest to improve changeability while providing efficiency and effective-ness to all the phases of software development. In this work, we created mechanisms for automating document processing and management to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of documentation activities of safety-critical software systems development, most concretely in the aerospace domain. The implemented tools were co-designed and validated iteratively in the concrete industrial context of Critical Software (CSW) projects, within a wider research work towards continuous certification [3]. We interviewed Critical Software professionals to validate our solution, collected feedback on the implemented tools and got insights for future work. The tools were also the target of synthetic tests that allowed us to conclude that document automation is possible in the critical-safety software development industry and carries several benefits. The developed tools are not yet qualified in compliance with the DO-330 standard (Tools Qualification).