Automating Airborne Software Certification Compliance Using Cert DevOps

The development of avionics software follows strict processes to ensure care is taken commensurate with the safety required of the system. This effort is significant and has many aspects that bring safety, but the complex set of artifacts required to prove the process was followed can result in significant cost and schedule. This can put at risk the ability to create new and transformative software for a future that includes advanced aircraft and single pilot operations. We are applying DevOps principles to avionics software development in a transformative way to address these issues.DevOps principles have been used in software development for many years to increase flow through automation, provide faster feedback, and incorporate continuous improvement. This is typically done in the frame of software implementation but is typically not inclusive of domain requirements like DO-178C. Automating the tasks and evidence required by DO-178 can provide a significant speed advantage. In this research project we worked to understand how much could be automated, and how the automation can become a robust infrastructure that reduces the chance of human error in the development process.Our preliminary results indicate > 75% of common defects, especially those liable to become open problem reports (OPRs), can be addressed through robust infrastructure. We have also measured substantial improvement to cycle time and reduction in the use of difficult-to-justify, regression-oriented testing.Our conclusion is that this sort of step change in safety-driven software development is possible. A process we call ‘Cert DevOps’ enables a more robust and agile development cycle necessary for the significant number of new features required for avionics in support of single pilot operation. Implications of this change include the possibility of auditing the automations of the infrastructure rather than the resulting automated output, which could form the basis of future standards work.