Critical Software Cultures - Analyses of Processes in Four Domains

Processes constrain developer freedom and impact software development cost. They can increase costs from only a few cents to almost 1000 USD per line of code. But they can also benefit the maintainability, dependability and safety of critical software. If failure risk costs are high, then the application of more expensive processes can actually reduce costs. Therefore it is important to understand which processes to apply when. This paper investigates development in four domains from aerospace to research, in order to extract some of the hidden expert knowledge expressed through the usage of processes. It analyzes data from a survey in a biotope of unregulated projects and three standards with respect to how process cost and benefit are balanced through criticality tailoring of processes. The results add to our understanding of criticality tailoring and the domains' engineering cultures, provide hints for what to address in process improvements, and can help to gauge if a standard might need adjustment.