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Enhancing Aviation Software Development: An Experience Report on Conducting Audits

Published: 06 December 2023 Publication History

Abstract

Software audits have paramount importance as they play a critical role in upholding the integrity, security, safety, and regulatory compliance of software systems. In the context of aviation, the RTCA DO-178C standard is specifically designed to guide the development and certification of safety-critical software used in aircraft systems. The RTCA DO-178C standard is a crucial framework for ensuring that safety-critical software in aviation systems adheres to rigorous guidelines and objectives throughout the development process. These guidelines are indispensable in ensuring that the software fulfills the stringent safety requirements necessary for airworthiness certification. The primary objective of this report is to share the author’s extensive experience in conducting software audits onboard aircraft. Over the course of 20 years working in the industry, the authors have amassed valuable data from numerous audits. The findings encompass 4 distinct scenarios and 7 key pitfalls identified in 93 Planning Audits, 110 Development Audits, and 98 Verification Audits.

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Cited By

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  • (2025)Systematic mapping study on requirements engineering for regulatory compliance of software systemsInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107622178(107622)Online publication date: Feb-2025

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cover image ACM Other conferences
SBQS '23: Proceedings of the XXII Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality
November 2023
391 pages
ISBN:9798400707865
DOI:10.1145/3629479
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 06 December 2023

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Author Tags

  1. DO-178C
  2. audit
  3. aviation
  4. certification
  5. software
  6. standard

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  • Research-article
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

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  • Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES)

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SBQS '23
SBQS '23: XXII Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality
November 7 - 10, 2023
Bras\'{\i}lia, Brazil

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Overall Acceptance Rate 35 of 99 submissions, 35%

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View all
  • (2025)Systematic mapping study on requirements engineering for regulatory compliance of software systemsInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107622178(107622)Online publication date: Feb-2025

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