The 'Physics of Failure' project aims to determine what is required to develop reliable products, examining all mechanisms leading to product failure – including software.

Software: a critical parameter for ensuring the reliability of a product

Even though software is not of a physical nature, it is incorporated into most products and is therefore a crucial parameter in ensuring product reliability.

Test first before you programme

The test-first principle from Agile software development has become popular in recent years. The premise is that you develop the test before you start programming. The benefit is that creating the test has a significant favourable influence on the subsequent software development. When you build software, you consider the big picture, whereas when you test, you consider exceptions and boundaries. In other words, if the test is developed before the programming, you get many more details and perspectives that you can feed into your considerations when programming.

Unit testing and subsystem testing can improve software

Automating unit and subsystem testing makes it easy to re-run tests with each change, ensuring code functionality over time. By developing artificial environments for units and expanding tests with each feature addition, this approach supports efficient and reliable development.

Test user-friendliness of graphical user interfaces

The test-first principle also applies to graphical user interfaces, but some specific concerns apply. As a start, you can outline the interface and ask users to consider its comprehensibility and user-friendliness before you develop it. Automating the test is not always simple, but some tools can help you. In this case, you cannot be sure that the investment in automation is worthwhile. Sometimes, you end up with a 'manual' test script and in practice, repeating your test requires more resources. You should still repeat your test, but not as frequently.

Software testing is a steppingstone to creating reliable devices

Software testing is fundamental to building reliable software and devices. Software testing is fundamental to building reliable devices, and adopting a test-first approach can enhance reliability across development projects.

Contact us to find out how we can help design and test reliable software and devices.