Software Safety Primer

I met Cliff at a seminar. What a genuine and sincere man. And extremely knowledgeable.

Well written highlights of the subject. Not in depth.

Thanks

There is not much technical detail, but you get a really broad introduction to the subject. So far, it is the best introduction I have found about software safety.

This appears to be the first book written that is entirely devoted to the topic of software safety. Software is appreciably different than hardware, having many different features and characteristics. These unique characteristics of software make the safety process significantly more difficult and complicated than for hardware. Mr. Ericson carefully steps through the various aspects of software safety, eventually presenting the most current approach to developing safe software.The book covers many important software safety topics, such as:• The unique nature and characteristics of software• Example software related mishaps• Why software safety is different• The two-pronged approach to software safety• Software criticality index and level of rigor• The types of software testing for safety• Safe software reuse• Unused code with respect to safety• Aerospace, FAA and NASA approaches• Code safety checklist• Common mistakes in software safetyThis is an important book to read because there is so much misleading and incorrect information floating around that the correct software safety process needs to be set straight. For example, this book debunks the myth that existing safety methods and techniques do not work with modern complex digital systems. Also, this book provides a focus on the safety of software, avoiding the temptation to delve off into side topics, such as probability theory or how to perform a hazard analysis.This book is not a cook book, but it does provide insightful answers to many common questions regarding software safety. It provides an overview of the entire topic, providing the reader with many different options to consider for a software safety program.I highly recommend this book for detailed introduction to software safety.

It's a small and short book, but it repeats the same talking points over and over again.The author continues to hold onto old school viewpoints about not being able to evaluate software related risks, referring to software as an "enigma". This has been debunked numerous times in modern literature with the conclusion that while software failures are systematic, the triggering conditions are random. Therefore, we CAN reason about the failure probability of software, just like any other hardware device. In fact, hardware failures (especially due to wear and tear) may be more predictable than software failures!For a book on software safety, it's amazing how the book doesn't cover any hazard analysis techniques other than FTA (Fault Tree Analysis). There is nothing on FMEA. Nothing on HAZOP. Nothing on STAMP/STPA. Just an overabundance of tables and checklists.The book also wanders into topics better suited for a general software engineering text such as talk of software development life cycle models, types of software testing (white box, black box, etc.).There are no exercise questions in the textbook at all.Finally, and perhaps most irritating of all, the book uses a LOT of acronyms, and doesn't always introduce what they mean right away, or only introduces them once in a diagram or sentence somewhere in the book and then never mentions them by their full name ever again.

Many of the acronyms are defined later in the book. If you are not familiar with military or aviation safety, then the book will be difficult. If you are not familiar with at least one industry safety standard, the book might not make any sense. I am in iec 62304 industry. It was helpful, but there are better books. It is not a bad book by any means and had good sections.