SOFTWARE FAILURE MODE AND EFFECT ANALYSIS (SFMEA) - Software Design for Six-Sigma: A Roadmap for Excellence - page 415

TABLE 16.2 (Continued)

Year Reference Contribution

Stamatis, D. H., Failure
Mode and Effect Analysis:
FMEA from Theory to
Execution, Milwaukee,
ASQC Quality Press, 1995.

Stamatis:
Presented the use of FMEA with information
systems.
Noted that computer industry failures may
result from software development process
problems, coding, systems analysis, systems
integration, software errors, and typing errors.
Pointed out that failures may develop from the
work of testers, developers, and managers.
Noted that a detailed FMEA analysis may
examine the source code for errors in logic and
loops, parameters and linkage, declarations
and initializations, and syntax.

Becker, J.C. & Flick, G, A
Practical Approach to Failure
Mode, Effects and Criticality
Analysis (FMECA) for
computing systems.
High-Assurance Systems
Engineering Workshop, pp.
228-236, 1996.

Becker and Flick:
Applied FMEA in Lockheed Martin's
development of a distributed system for
air-traffic control.
Described the failure modes and detection
methods used in their FMEA. The classes of
failure modes for their application included
hardware or software stop, hardware or
software crash, hardware or software hang,
slow response, startup failure, faulty message,
check-point file failure, internal capacity
exceeded, and loss of service.
Listed several detection methods. A task
heartbeat monitor is coordination software that
detects a missed function task heartbeat. A
message sequence manager checks message
sequence numbers to flag messages that are
not in order. A roll call method takes
attendance to ensure that all members of a
group are present. A duplicate message check
looks for the receipt of duplicate messages.

1996

Lutz, R.R & Woodhouse,
R.M., Experience Report:
Contributions of SFMEA to
Requirements Analysis,
Proceedings of ICRE '96,
April 15-18,1996, Colorado
Springs, CO, pp. 44-51,
1996.

Lutz and Woodhouse:
Described their use of software FMEA in
requirements analysis at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory. Software FMEA helped them with
the early understanding of requirements,
communication, and error removal.
Noted that software FMEA is a
time-consuming, tedious, manual task.

(Continued)