Analysis of Companies Gaps in the Application of Standards for Safety-Critical Software

The introduction of a new standard for safety-critical systems in a company usually requires investments in training and tools to achieve a deep understanding of the processes, the techniques and the required technological support. In general, for a new standard that is desired to be introduced, it is both relevant and challenging to rate the capability of the company to apply the standard, and consequently to estimate the effort in its adoption. Additionally, questions on the maturity in the application of such standard may still persist for a long time after its introduction. Focusing on prescriptive software standards for critical systems, this paper presents a framework for gap analysis that measures the compliance of a company's practices, knowledge and skills with the requirements of a standard for the development of safety-critical systems. The framework is exercised in a company to rate its maturity in the usage of the avionic standard DO-178B.