Workshop on assurance cases: best practices, possible obstacles, and future opportunities 1 July 2004, Florence, Italy

Summary form only given. The purpose of this workshop is to promote communication among groups with similar challenges in assurance cases - groups that often are unaware of what is being done in other similar communities. We hope that the workshop will start a process of continuing discussion across disciplines on the central challenges and opportunities for assurance cases, and initiate the development of a standard set of best practices and guidelines for developing and assessing assurance cases. In addition to specific summary outputs from the workshop, we will use the workshop as an opportunity to gauge interest and commitment in forming an IEEE sponsored planning group to address possible standards activities for assurance cases. At a minimum we would like to make this the first in a series of annual workshops on assurance cases, and begin to form a cross-discipline community of interest. We have the structured the workshop in three sessions. The first session will focus on current best practices, experiences, and recurring challenges. The second session will focus on promising research (tools, notations, techniques, etc.) and new opportunities for developing, reviewing, and maintaining assurance cases. The final session will include a summary and review of key points from the first two sessions, moderated discussion on important consensus and disagreements, and identification of next steps. Position papers, presentations, and follow up material after the workshop will be posted on the workshop web site only.