PROCESS ASSURANCE:
Process assurance is concerned with collecting information about processes used during system development, and the outcomes of these processes. This information provides evidence of the analyses, reviews, and tests that have been carried out during software development.
Specific safety assurance activities should be included at all stages in the software development process. These safety assurance activities record the analyses that have been carried out and the person or people responsible for these analyses. Safety assurance activities that are incorporated into software processes may include the following:
1. Hazard logging and monitoring, which trace hazards from preliminary hazard analysis through to testing and system validation.
2. Safety reviews, which are used throughout the development process.
3. Safety certification, where the safety of critical components is formally certified. This involves a group external to the system development team examining the available evidence and deciding whether or not a system or component should be considered to be safe before it is made available for use.
To support these safety assurance processes, project safety engineers should be appointed who have explicit responsibility for the safety aspects of a system. This means that these individuals will be held responsible if a safety-related system failure occurs. They must be able to demonstrate that the safety assurance activities have been properly carried out.
Safety engineers work with quality managers to ensure that a detailed configuration management system is used to track all safety-related documentation and keep it in step with the associated technical documentation. This is essential in all dependable processes.
