A dedicated Quality approach to manage 'small' software tools in control centers

摘要

At CNES, the French Space Agency, "small" software tools are internally developed by operational teams. These tools provide additional capabilities to better analyze data during operations. They also automate some tasks. They are developed to improve Control Centre software environment. They can be defined as the family of simple software (Excel, shell scripts, python, ...). Although, they are well qualified at least during the ground segment validation phase and the simulation campaign, as the quality point of view, the question of the sustainability of these tools can be asked. First, the level of each tool shall be assessed. The tool has a Necessary level if its loss causes a significant additional risk with regards to the operations or a significant increase of the workload. Otherwise, it has a Secondary level. Quality efforts are maximized on the Necessary family. Of course, if it appears during the inventory that a tool is finally developed in an elaborated language (JAVA, C, ...) with a high volume of code lines and a complex architecture, then it is definitely not a real "small" tool and it will enter an industrial development and maintenance process as per ECSS E40 [1] and ECSS Q80 [2]. For both families, at a minimum, each tool should have a unique identification thanks to the definition of at least a version, a unique name and reference, a maintenance manager, an archive place. The history of changes shall be documented within the tool itself. The record of all validated tools will be done in a unique reference server. These will lead to a proper configuration control. The User Manual and the Installation Manual are detailed. For Necessary tools, additional information shall be documented such as the design, the test plan, a specification, etc... These will lead to a proper documentation control. Software products shall respect coding rules. Developers can use CNES reference coding rules handbooks and check their code with quality tools in order to detect rules violation and determine improvements. The control of the validation status of each tool is the last mandatory action. For Necessary tools, the validation process is more formal and includes all practices usually performed for industrial software. In particular, it includes a Test Readiness Review and Post Test Review to control the proper establishment of change requests, the test configuration, the test plan and report. This dedicated Quality approach to manage the "small" software tools in control centers is already applied at CNES on several projects such as ATV-CC, MSL-FIMOC, GALILEO, etc.... Thanks to this pragmatic product assurance methodology, control center teams can provide software tools guaranteeing the security, reliability and efficiency of the operations.