Software based high integrity airborne systems-can their development be managed?

Considers why the ability to manage the production of software for high integrity airborne systems should be in doubt. Even though airborne software products are generally much smaller than their counterparts in the commercial world, such as banking systems, they can pose problems of greater intractability. Airborne software has to operate in a real time environment and is complex because of the range of functions and mode changes which it has to provide. Additionally, safety functions are required to allow it to operate in a high integrity system. Thus, although the code is compact, it is very difficult to write because of the environment in which it operates. Clearly it is not technologically impossible to develop software-driven machines for implementing real time systems. This implies the difficulties are those of scale, complexity and managing the processes. This paper deals with the problems of managing the processes