Lord Austin Lecture: The Software Reliability Challenge

The beginning of the 21st Century will see the growing dominance of electrical and electronic engineering in the automotive industry. This transition is driven by environmental, consumer and technology trends, and is causing the exponential growth of software complexity within vehicles. We therefore need to move away from 'scenario-based' quality engineering techniques to find a new, hazard-based approach to quality engineering for automotive software. This lecture presents an alternative approach, proposing a new definition for reliability, and a new model for engineering as a failure mode factory.