Formal Methods in Dependable Systems Engineering: A Survey of Professionals from Europe and North America

Mario Gleirscher; Diego Marmsoler

doi:10.1007/s10664-020-09836-5

Formal Methods in Dependable Systems Engineering: A Survey of Professionals from Europe and North America

Mario Gleirscher, Diego Marmsoler

Computer Science

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

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 Parkin (1993).

Original language	English
Number of pages	74
Journal	Empirical Software Engineering
Early online date	9 Sept 2020
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-020-09836-5
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 9 Sept 2020

Bibliographical note

Keywords

Formal methods
Empirical research
On-line survey
Usage
Usefulness
Practical challenges
Research transfer
Software engineering education & training

Access to Document

10.1007/s10664-020-09836-5Licence: CC BY

Report
© The Author(s) 2020
Accepted author manuscript, 394 KBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.08815Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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abstract = "Context: Formal methods (FMs) have been around for a while, still beingunclear how to leverage their benefits, overcome their challenges, and set newdirections for their improvement towards a more successful transfer intopractice. Objective: We study the use of formal methods in mission-criticalsoftware domains, examining industrial and academic views. Method: We perform across-sectional on-line survey. Results: Our results indicate an increasedintent 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 thisintent. Conclusions: We present the largest study of this kind so far (N =216), and our observations provide valuable insights, highlighting directionsfor future theoretical and empirical research of formal methods. Our findingsare strongly coherent with earlier observations by Austin and Parkin (1993).",

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