From formal models to formally based methods: an industrial experience

We address the problem of increasing the impact of formal methods in the practice of industrial computer applications. We summarize the reasons why formal methods so far did not gain widespead use within the industrial environment despite several promising experiences. We suggest an evolutionary rather than revolutionary attitude in the introduction of formal methods in the practice of industrial applications, and we report on our long-standing experience which involves an academic institution. Politecnico di Milano, two main industrial partners, ENEL and CISE, and occasionally a few other industries. Our approach aims at augmenting an existing and fairly deeply rooted informal industrial methodology with our original formalism, the logic specification language TRIO. On the basis of the experiences we gained we argue that our incremental attitude toward the introduction of formal methods within the industry could be effective largely independently from the chosen formalism.