Incorporating a Formal Design Technique into an Industrial Environment: An Experience Report

Formal Specification Techniques (FSTs) are mathematically-based techniques that can be used by system designers to specify the desired behavior of a computer-based system and its structural properties. It has been hypothesized that the use of FSTs in software design has two primary advantages: (1) the act of formalizing design concepts provides the designer with insights that can lead to a deeper understanding of solutions and can uncover faults in designs, and (2) rigorous analysis of the design can reveal errors not easily captured in reviews of informal models. This paper describes a technology transfer pilot project that was initiated to test this hypothesis in an industrial, rather than academic, environment.