Abstract
In software-based systems, the notion of software failure is magnified if the software in question is a component of a safety critical system. Hence, to ensure a required level of safety, the product must undergo expensive rigorous testing and verification/validation activities. To minimize the cost of quality (COQ) associated with the development of safety critical systems, it becomes imperative that the assessment of intermediate artifacts (e.g., requirement, design documents or models) is done efficiently and effectively to maximize early defect detection and/or defect prevention. However, as a human-centered process, the assessment of software architecture for safety critical systems relies heavily on the experience and knowledge of the assessment team to ensure that the proposed architecture is consistent with the software functional and safety requirements.
The knowledge centered assessment pattern (KCAP) acts as effective tool to assist assessment teams by providing key information on what architectural elements should be assessed, why they should to be assessed, and how they should be assessed. Furthermore, the use of KCAP highlights cases where the software architecture has been properly, over, under, or incoherently engineered.