Practitioners' views on the use of formal methods: an industrial survey by structured interview

Snook, Colin; Harrison, Rachel

doi:10.1016/s0950-5849(00)00166-x

Cited by 27 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The entry cost for formal methods must seem rather high to the hard-pressed software project manager [Snook and Harrison 2001], although, as noted in Sect. 4.4, the cost of repeated use can decrease dramatically.…”

Section: Lightweight and Heavyweight Formal Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formal methods

et al. 2009

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Formal methods use mathematical models for analysis and verification at any part of the program life-cycle. We describe the state of the art in the industrial use of formal methods, concentrating on their increasing use at the earlier stages of specification and design. We do this by reporting on a new survey of industrial use, comparing the situation in 2009 with the most significant surveys carried out over the last 20 years. We describe some of the highlights of our survey by presenting a series of industrial projects, and we draw some observations from these surveys and records of experience. Based on this, we discuss the issues surrounding the industrial adoption of formal methods. Finally, we look to the future and describe the development of a Verified Software Repository, part of the worldwide Verified Software Initiative. We introduce the initial projects being used to populate the repository, and describe the challenges they address.

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Section: Lightweight and Heavyweight Formal Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formal methods

et al. 2009

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“…In a second study in 2001, Snook and Harrison (2001) conduct interviews with representatives of five companies to discover the main issues involved in FM use, in particular, issues of understandability and the difficulty of creating and utilising formal specifications.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formal methods in dependable systems engineering: a survey of professionals from Europe and North America

Gleirscher

Marmsoler

2020

Empir Software Eng

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Context Formal methods (FMs) have been around for a while, still being unclear how to leverage their benefits, overcome their challenges, and set new directions for their improvement towards a more successful transfer into practice. Objective We study the use of formal methods in mission-critical software domains, examining industrial and academic views. Method We perform a cross-sectional on-line survey. Results Our results indicate an increased intent to apply FMs in industry, suggesting a positively perceived usefulness. But the results also indicate a negatively perceived ease of use. Scalability, skills, and education seem to be among the key challenges to support this intent. Conclusions We present the largest study of this kind so far (N = 216), and our observations provide valuable insights, highlighting directions for future theoretical and empirical research of formal methods. Our findings are strongly coherent with earlier observations by Austin and Graeme (1993).

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“…(Zimmerman et al, 2002) investigated how various factors of state-based requirements specification language design affect readability using aerospace applications: no decisive conclusions were reached. (Snook and Harrison, 2001) presents an empirical study of practitioners' views related to understandability and usability of formal methods. In contrast to popular opinions, all the experienced interviewees agreed that typical software engineers have no real difficulties with understanding formal notations.…”

Section: Formal Methods In Large-scale Projectsmentioning

confidence: 99%