Improving the integration of certification during critical software development

This article deals with the issue of certification, highlighting its usefulness to society. It is interesting and original in that it gives the point of view of a member of a certification body. It then turns more specifically to the development of mission-critical software, with an illustration from the aeronautics sector. It highlights the difficulties encountered in companies and the current state of practices, and puts into perspective a number of possible ways of improving them. In particular, it demonstrates the benefits of integrating certification constraints more closely into the ongoing systems development process.

Our proposal is to go beyond this and draw inspiration from Agile values (regular production of operational deliverables, acceptance of changing needs, valuing interactions between individuals) to be able to provide guarantees of compliance with standards earlier in the development process and on an ongoing basis. This is what the article calls "Continuous Certification".

Section 2 sets the context for this work, introduces the general issue of certification and provides an overview of industrial practices in various fields (automotive, health, nuclear, etc.). Section 3 reviews current software engineering practices and explains how certification objectives constrain the software development process in aeronautics (objectives, reference frameworks, induced constraints, etc.). This section also analyzes how certification is experienced by manufacturers in the sector. Section