Formal Methods Diffusion: Past Lessons and Future Prospects

Formal methods

“…They observed that "Tool support, while necessary for the full industrialisation process, has been found neither necessary nor sufficient for successful application of formal methods to date." Nevertheless, Bloomfield noted that the immaturity of theories and tool bases meant that some successful applications require a "heroic" level of effort, that tools are developed but not transferred across platforms or research groups, and that tools are not always accompanied by advances in methodology or theory [Bloomfield and Craigen 1999].…”

“…Bloomfield's wide-ranging review [Bloomfield and Craigen 1999] includes evaluations of research programmes, major conferences, and industrial application areas. A leading point is the suggestion that models of technology diffusion should consciously be applied to formal methods adoption.…”

“…Craigen et al [Craigen et al 1993a;1993b] suggest that tools need to be integral parts of development environments, that the gap between the tools and the standard production process needs to disappear, and that certain analyses could be invoked within existing development environments. There are strong arguments in favour of this approach as a means of moving formal verification technology from innovators to first adopters [Bloomfield and Craigen 1999].…”

Formal Methods in Collaborative Projects

“…Several papers in the nineties discussed common myths of FM (Hall, 1990;Bowen and Hinchey, 1995a) and FM commandments (Bowen and Hinchey, 1995b;Bowen and Hinchey, 2006;Bowen and Hinchey, 2005). Numerous surveys on industrial use of FM have been published, among the most recent ones (Craigen et al, 1993;Bloomfield et al, 2000;Woodcock et al, 2009). Understandability and comprehensibility of FM have been hypothesized for years as hindering factors of industry takeup of FM.…”

An empirical research agenda for understanding formal methods productivity

“…As a result there have been a number of papers reporting on myths [22,6], guidelines [5,8,32], and management issues [45] for formal methods projects. There have also been some surveys of industrial use of formal methods [3,50,12], and some surveys of published experience reports [7]. Individually and together, these papers also identify a range of research questions and evidence on productivity for formal methods.…”