The Development and Deployment of Formal Methods in the UK

In addition to the major UK contributions to research underpinning formal approaches to the specification and development of computer systems—and perhaps as a consequence of this—some significant attempts to deploy the ideas into practical environments have taken place in the United Kingdom. The authors of this article have been involved in formal methods for many years and both had contact with a significant proportion of this history. This article both lists key ideas and indicates where attempts were made to use the ideas in practice. Not all of these deployment stories have been a complete success and an attempt is made to tease out lessons that influence the probability of successful long-term changes to software engineering.